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The Current Transcript for September 4, 2017

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

We went three weeks, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It was exhausting. I feel real proud of my community and my fire department.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: How did you spend your summer? Stan McCarthy spent his up against raging wildfires in the interior of B.C. and a relentless determined effort that was and is still being replicated in far too many places right now. Wildfires have cut a devastating swath through far too many provinces, thousands of firefighters working tirelessly to save communities. In half an hour, we'll get some insight into the magnitude of it all through the experience of one particular firefighter. Fires, floods, we begin a new season of The Current this Labor Day, still considering the events of the past two months. This has been a summer of eclipses from the meteorological to the astrological to the political, the summer where the zone of totality spoke to a moment of darkness in the middle of the day, where days of incredulity followed a deadly rally in Virginia, and where geo political posturing is front and center again today. In an hour, we're tracking an angle on those DNA ancestry tests you see advertised endlessly. Specifically, how white nationalists are using them. And on the day after North Korea carried out another nuclear test and the White House warned of a powerful military response, we're starting with the immediate plans for the U.S. military and President Donald Trump's plans for Afghanistan.

SOUNDCLIP

My original instinct was to pull out. But all my life, I've heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office.

AMT: I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. A brand new season of The Current begins right now.

Back To Top »

Why the U.S. 'war machine' is driving troops into Afghanistan: Jeffrey Sachs

Guests: May Jeong, Jeffrey Sachs

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Music]

[Singing in indistinct language]

AMT: Well that is the soundtrack to a Taliban propaganda video. It shows Taliban soldiers defiantly flying the flag as their armored convoy enters into battle against Afghan government forces. That of course is the same Taliban against which a coalition of countries including Canada, went to war after the 9/11 attacks. Canada left Afghanistan after more than a decade of fighting but the war there continues and the Taliban appears to once again be gaining strength. Last month, Taliban forces claimed victory over two districts in the eastern part of the country and, also last month, the U.S. president Donald Trump went against his campaign promises and committed more troops to the country. More details of America's new Afghanistan policy are expected on Wednesday when the defense secretary General Jim Mattis testifies before Congress. Now as for Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says our existing aid commitments there will continue. But there are no plans to send in troops again. May Jeong is a Canadian freelance journalist who lives in Kabul Afghanistan. We reached her today in New York City hello.

MAY JEONG: Thank you for having me.

AMT: So, we're talking about two districts that were taken by the Taliban last month. How successful has the Taliban been in retaking parts of Afghanistan over the last 12 months?

MAY JEONG: Oh, they've been incredibly successful it's quite comparable actually. In the past we used to talk about the fighting season. The so-called fighting season that would typically be around April, wrap around or around now. This is the Eid weekend in many Muslim countries around the world, including Afghanistan, and people don't talk about- security analysts don't talk about the fighting season anymore. It's just a continuation of war and even just, in my time there, I have been living there for five years, we have gone from districts centers falling, to provincial capitals falling, to - You know outskirts of Kabul are now held by the Taliban.

AMT: So how much of the country does the Taliban control?

MAY JEONG: So, you ask that question, the U.S. Forces Afghanistan, American mission in Afghanistan that coordinates with the coalition forces, of which Canada is a number, issues these sort of numbers or percents, specific percentages of territory in Afghanistan. Our allies, The Afghan government control, you know are very particular numbers like sixty nine point five percent. I think the number now is in the low 60s. I remember asking the former National Security Adviser, Afghan national security adviser once this question of: “are these numbers accurate? How are they even able to get the specific numbers?” You know they even traveled to most parts of the country. And he laughed and said if anything probably numbers the other way around. The Taliban have control over most of the territory and it's the government that have these sort of pockets of land that they control in particular urban capitals across the country, certain cities that most Canadians would have heard of such as Kandahar or Herat or Mazar, urban centers to government control. And most of the rural areas belong to the Taliban. They always have.

AMT: So you're saying that the U.S. military estimates that the Afghan government controls more than 60 percent but that's actually too high, that the Taliban controls more than 40?

MAY JEONG: I think that Taliban controls more than 60.

AMT: More than 60.

MAY JEONG: Uhmm.

AMT: Okay. So they say that's what the government controls?

MAY JEONG: Correct.

AMT: Okay. Well, how are they getting so much momentum? How did that happen?

MAY JEONG: OOf. Well, it happened because we went in with no eye towards reconciliation of any kind. In 2001-2002 there was clear military victory. The Taliban reached out consistently wanting to make peace and to be thwarted. There was advances. They were pushed out to the neighboring country, meaning Pakistan, which provided sanctuary I think we heard that, used quite often in relation to Pakistan. They were able to reconsolidate and then that was when the fallen government, the Taliban government, became an insurgency and was able to fight back. And we've consistently demonstrated a lack of I think earnestness and real interest when it comes to Afghanistan. I think just because we've been in our country for 16 years doesn't mean that it's a real priority. A lot of the - You know Canada, America, the United Kingdom, these are countries with great, tremendous amounts of you know various capital. If they want to make something happen I think they will have. And the fact that there is no peace in Afghanistan leads me to believe that that is not a priority for, certainly, our country and definitely our allies as well.

AMT: Well, tell me just a little bit more before I let you go; when the Taliban takes over the region then what changes for the people who live there?

MAY JEONG: Well, this is also the ironic part. Parts of the country that are contested, the contested territories or where it's miserable for civilians to live, once the territory actually falls to one side or another, whether it be the government forces, or the Taliban, or ISIS, or you know many other various insurgent groups are active. I think your life actually does become easier because it is the active combat that kills people.

AMT: And so how visible is the Taliban in day to day life in Afghanistan right now?

MAY JEONG: It really depends on where you are and I guess the way in which you know that the war is metastasizing and becoming more deadly is that it, wherever you are now you experience war. I mean there were some years in the war where if you're an ex-pat in Kabul you were really psychically miles you know kilometers away, I should say, from the war, the front line. But that doesn't happen as much anymore. I mean the house that I live in, in Kabul, it was near the epicenter of the bombing that happened on the German embassy in May 31^st. All of our windows blew out. And that's the kind of thing that - You know, it's happened once before in my tenure there. But I feel like it now it's happening with more regularity

AMT: Right. The more war the more danger. May, thanks for speaking to us.

MAY JEONG: Thank you.

AMT: May Jeong, Canadian freelance journalist, she lives in Kabul. She happens to be in New York City today.

SOUNDCLIP

Micromanagement from Washington DC does not win battles. They are one in the field. They are drawing upon the judgment and expertise of wartime commanders and frontline soldiers, acting in real time with real authority and with a clear mission to defeat the enemy.

AMT: Well, that is U.S. president Donald Trump outlining one of the key pillars of his new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan last month, also signaling that he'll follow his top military people suggest. However, leaving the war to the generals is cause for concern for my next guest. Jeffrey Sachs is the director of the Center for Sustainable Development. He's professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. Last week in a piece for The Boston Globe, he characterized this decision on Afghanistan as an example of the collapse of American governance. Jeffrey Sachs joins us from New York City. Good morning.

JEFFREY SACHS: How are you?

AMT: Well, I'm interested to know what you're thinking. Let's start with that clip you just heard of President Trump. Micromanagement from Washington does not win battles. The defense secretary has signed orders to send more troops to Afghanistan. You have concerns.

JEFFREY SACHS: Well, if I could give you my technical reaction it would be blah blah blah. We've heard this from Bush. We heard this from Obama. Now we hear it from Trump. In fact, the United States he's been engaged in war in Afghanistan since 1979 with some short interludes. There is no strategy. There is no “Defeat the enemy”. We are in an endless cycle of violence without a clarity, purpose, direction, chance of success. And remember the coalition forces, so-called, had more than a hundred thousand troops in Afghanistan for many years. Just a few years ago that didn't “defeat the enemy”. This is political. This is social. This is economic. And this is not for us.

AMT: Donald Trump had actually called for an end to U.S. involvement in Afghanistan for years. He campaigned on this. Why did he change his mind you think?

JEFFREY SACHS: I think there are two basic reasons. One is that the U.S. government has a deep permanent security state and that is a war machine. And it's been a war machine for decades, whether it's Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya and countless more places. It's a vast military apparatus, an enormous fortune in spent on it, hundreds of billions of dollars a year. And the modus operandi between the covert operations and the CIA, the special ops, and the U.S. military is to fight. So that's a starting point. The U.S. has been at war almost perpetually for decades. The second is that politicians don't have a strategy for winning but they don't want to be blamed for losing. That was Obama with Afghanistan. He just wanted to stretch it out so that he wouldn't be blamed and that was the story of the Vietnam War. You know, the president we're told there's no way to win. But they lied and prolong the war because they didn't want to be the ones to lose. And Trump came in actually one of the few things that he makes sense about, and there are very few. He made sense about ending these wars but the generals get to him. The permanent state gets to him and the wars continue. We've learned in our history in the United States that it's the wise presidents who are able to say no to the military. Well Trump they can't obviously or did not.

AMT: Well, you point out actually that he's got three generals, retired generals, advising him on key portfolios. John Kelly, White House chief of staff, James Mattis secretary of defense, H.R. McMaster National Security Council.

JEFFREY SACHS: Well it's interesting. You know, none of these is a traditionally a military position. The Defense Department is supposed to be civilian led, the chief of staff but certainly not, the National Security Advisor sometimes yes but typically not. But Trump has three generals I think they're kind of father figures around him. You know he doesn't have much self-control so these are people that are there to “control” the outbursts in the early morning tweets. But the fact of the matter is these are generals. They're part of the National Security State. And they fight wars and they don't want to lose wars. And the security state does not like to give up military bases. The United States has military bases in perhaps 60 countries around the world. We don't even know the real list because a lot of it is secret, but around 60 countries around the world. And one of the ideas is never give up a base. So, we have a base of operations in Afghanistan, keep hold of it. Who knows it'll come in useful someday. In the meantime, we spend around a trillion dollars in Afghanistan so far and only help to destroy the country. We've done nothing constructive for the country.

AMT: Now of course you know there are those who would disagree with that and I'm going to play a clip for you. He just happens to be a military man. This is Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. As a citizen he is not in favor of escalation in Afghanistan but listen to his reasons for continuing the mission from a military perspective.

SOUNDCLIP

As a military professional, I can see the strategic benefit of having military forces already positioned in Afghanistan. It is an extremely difficult place to get to. It's extremely difficult terrain, once you're there. So once you're established, you're very reluctant to leave, particularly when you look at the future and see that your number one threat in that future might indeed be China, with a contiguous border with Afghanistan. And you see the fact that Pakistan gives you all these fears with regard to its nuclear stockpile. So, there is reluctance on the part of military professionals to abandon all that.

AMT: And we recorded that clip of him last week. I'm guessing he would also “throw North Korea” quote unquote into that argument right now. What do you say to that Jeffrey Sachs.

JEFFREY SACHS: Well, that's exactly what I was saying. I like Lawrence Wilkerson for a lot of reasons. And no one is his straight talk. It isn't about Afghanistan for him though we should be there because we're there. It's hard to establish don't leave. It's got to China border with China. Well heck of a lot of other places and this is more prone to create trouble than not. But he's basically saying Afghanistan is - It's kind of a proxy. It'll help us somehow with Pakistan. It will help us somehow vaguely with China. Once you're in, it's so costly to get out. This is what has led the American imperial mentality for decades. I believe that it has been a massive cost especially to these countries after all. Look at what Afghanistan is, forty years after the CIA went in there, you know with Mujahideen.

AMT: Right. I want to just ask you, I know you have to get going, but you see the president's decision, to go with the generals on Afghanistan, as an example of a wider collapse of American governance. Can you explain that?

JEFFREY SACHS: Basically we have all the vested interest groups running their part of governance now. So the generals run military policy and the polluters run the environmental agencies. We even had Exxon Mobil running the State Department as it were with Tillerson there. The health care lobbyists run the legislation on health care. We don't have the general interest. We don't have the big picture. Congress is really a massive failure here. This is decades of war and imperial state and what sometimes called regulatory capture by these special interests. This is why American democracy is in such horrible shape right now. It's not representing the general interest or the public good, the common purpose. It's representing a series of special interests, whether it's the polluters or the military or the big healthcare lobbies, and we're getting miserable results from all of this. I think we're a danger to the world frankly.

AMT: Jeffrey Sachs thank you for your perspective.

JEFFREY SACHS: Great to be with you. Thank you.

AMT: Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He joined us from New York City.

[Music]

AMT: Well Happy Labor Day our new season of The Current is under way and tomorrow we're kicking off this season special project we're calling it Adaptation. And we're going to start in Burlington, Ontario with a story about how people there are adapting to climate change and preparing themselves for future extreme weather events. Now in 2014 the city of Burlington was hit by a sudden torrential rain storm causing severe flooding. It wreaked havoc on the homes of its residents. But instead of just waiting for the next storm to hit the city has decided to take a more proactive approach. Here's a bit of my conversation with the Burlington Mayor Rick Goldring.

SOUNDCLIP

The storm came out of nowhere and it was so intense. It wasn't just that total volume. It was how it fell in the concentrated area that it fell in. One term that our weather expert used was a weather bomb. I used to think that when you say adaptation you're throwing up the white flag and surrendering to climate change. But the reality is that we know, with where we are, with regard to increases in temperature and more extreme weather events that we do have to adapt because temperatures - Even if we reduce carbon dramatically, now, the temperatures are still going to climb and we're still going to get more and more and more extreme weather events. So adaptation is as crucial as mitigation.

AMT: Well, tune in tomorrow on The Current. We will hear how Burlington's battle relates to an even more extreme crisis of extreme weather. And you've been watching that go on in Texas of course, as we kick off a season long project. We're calling it Adaptation.

[Music: Theme]

Stay with us the CBC News is next and then 41 days straight on the frontlines of B.C.’s worst forest fires on record. Here, Fire Chief Stan McCarthy on the unimaginable summer of 2017. I'm Anna Maria Tremante. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, online on cbc.ca/thecurrent and on your radio app.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

B.C.'s wildfires sparks mental health concern for firefighters: chief

Guest: Stan McCarthy

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. And you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come:

SOUNDCLIP

I decided to have my DNA tested through Ancestry DNA. The big surprise was we are not German at all. Fifty two percent of my DNA comes from Scotland in Ireland. So, I traded in my Ladehausen for a …

AMT: Commercial DNA tests, like the one in that ad, are all the rage. But just how good is the science behind that? And what to make of the fact that they're suddenly popular with white nationalists hoping to prove their racial purity? We're putting ancestry DNA tests under the microscope, in about half an hour from now. But first, into the inferno of summer 2017.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: This past summer has seen a wild and vivid display of wildfires in Western Canada, in numbers and intensity that is being called unprecedented. Today as forest fires burn in Manitoba, there are more than 150 wildfires still raging in British Columbia. B.C has been under a state of emergency since early July. That has meant a long hard hot summer in the province for the 40000 people who were forced to leave their homes, for the communities that have been devastated and for the men and women who fight those fires. The community of 150 Mile House in BC's interior was one of the first to be evacuated this summer. Stan McCarthy is the local fire chief. He and his crews have had an intense summer working to protect their surrounding communities from the threat of the worst wildfire season in B.C.’s history.

SOUNDCLIP

STAN MCCARTHY: We've had a pretty hectic summer. It's been pretty demanding for all are firefighters. We've kind of missed summer. We just kind of blinked and it was gone [chuckles] because we were so busy.

[Music]

VOICE 1: This is CBC Radio 1 special emergency programming there are several fires burning out of control in B.C…

VOICE 2: We saw two fires starting. They were smoking. By the time we got down the hill they were full on in flames.

VOICE 3: And I can see just to the left of me, the fire has just come up and over that hillside burning away. There's a lot of open flame, a huge amount of smoke…

VOICE 4: It's terrifying. I can see flames and the wind is really strong and there's huge plumes of black smoke.

STAN MCCARTHY: We had a lightning strike right close to our community and then this forest fire started and it came into our community as a rank five forest fire. So we knew we were in trouble fairly quickly. Ranked fire was - The fire was burning really hot and fast. It is moving through the upper timber of the forest and there it sounds like a freight train coming.

[Sound: Burning trees]

STAN MCCARTHY: It started early afternoon and by 10:00 o’clock at night it was here in our community. It probably traveled 10 kilometers in that short of time.

AMT: So, tell me about the evacuation order what happened?

STAN MCCARTHY: My wife got the evacuation notice at midnight and the community had to get out of here fairly quickly, but they had quite a drive. They had to get to Williams Lake, which is only 15 kilometers; they probably had to drive 60 to get there, to go around round the fire to get to Williams Lake. Then, they evacuated Williams Lake a week later.

AMT: So they got to one place to be safe and then they have to move again.

STAN MCCARTHY: Yes. So then everybody had to leave Williams Lake. We had nobody in our area at all.

VOICE 5: [Sobbing] I am devastatingly sad but we had to evacuate to save our lives and I would rather have that than not.

[Indistinct chatter]

VOICE 6: Like we packed everything, our dog, we are going to go. It took us 10 minutes and we're gone.

VOICE 7: One minute your normal life, your day to day routine, at home and going to the grocery store and then poof the lightening came and it changed everything.

[Music]

VOICE 8: We laughed and we were like driving out. It looked like snow in the middle of July. It was like ashes were floating everywhere. The sky was dark. It looked like hell was raining over us.

[Sound: Engine]

STAN MCCARTHY: I was able to get up in the helicopter and have a look at the whole area at one time. And I couldn't believe the amount of destruction there was. There's you know all the tents burned for the ranchers, all the buildings burned, the hay sheds burned, some structures burned. It's just unbelievable and the fire doesn't travel in a straight line like a house fire. It's got four corners, where a forest fire has got many corners, you know. We had 18 different fire departments here at one time in my little firehall. The first fire storm on July 7th came through there and six days later we had a second fire storm that came through our area. So, I went through it twice. We let the fire storm pass through then we go back in to protect the residents and put out hot spots and worked like crazy.

AMT: You call it a fire storm.

STAN MCCARTHY: Yes. What exactly it is it looks like a storm of fire coming at you. A big wall of fire about 200 feet near. [Sound: Wind blowing] And it's traveling quickly. Did you ever here a jet flying right over top of you? It sounds like that. It is just unbelievable. You can't really describe it. You got to be there to see it. Smells like a burning campfire, right. You know, because unless it gets into a residence or something you know that toxic some [unintelligible]. But the forest fire itself, you get a lot of ambers and a lot of ashes from it, a lot of - a lot of wind. The wind was the biggest thing that we had problems with. It can get up to 200 kilometers an hour in its own wind. So it's pretty quick when it comes. You know so we were always watching the weather. So you go out there and make sure you guys were not in a danger zone.

AMT: Were there times when you had to like scramble to get out of its way?

STAN MCCARTHY: Yeah we did have to scramble once to get out of its way. We knew it was coming. So we just withdrew everybody from out of this one area and we may mustered out our fire hole and watch the big fire. The big plume of smoke from our fire hole, there's no way you're going to put it out this area. You have to let it pass by and then go back in and put all the hotspots and hopefully it hasn't destroyed everything in its path. The morning after the second fire started, when I drove up in the community I thought we lost a bunch of residents and I was just amazed the fire went around it. You know and I turned up one road and found there was no residents gone. Then I turned up another road and the fire's gone. Burnt black both sides of it. Right. And the power poles are hanging over the road and trees that I'm driving in this residential area of this little subdivision we got. I didn't expect to see a house there but we didn't lose one. It was quite – Your heart kind of sinks when you see it, at first, and then when you turn the corner and see all the houses there, your spirits are picked up again and say well yeah we can save all these and we go again.

AMT: Was anybody hurt?

STAN MCCARTHY: No. Just so we got nobody physically hurt. I got a hernia from lifting too heavy but I [unintelligible] was a major injury. So, other than that bit of smoke inhalation for one fellow that's got that now, and some lung infection from the smoke. We were masked and stuff, you know protection mask. But I think if you're out in that atmosphere so long, I think it just gets to you after a while and you can't get out of it because the whole communities is full of it. So you come off the fire line and you couldn't see a block down the road from our fire. So it's all smoky.

AMT: You say you got a hernia from this?

STAN MCCARTHY: Yes. From lifting up something too heavy I was [laughs] we were making a water supply for the second firestorm so I - because we don't have hydrants or anything here we have to pack all our water so we put up Portal tanks and you take water out of that. So we were looking for extra water supplies so we could get water from different areas of the fire. So we didn't have to haul it so far. And we have a little lake up here called Dougan Lake. I think I we dropped that lake about 18 inches, the amount of water took a lot of it.

AMT: Is that right, huh? So you make light of it now but that must have been painful for you during that physical work, though.

STAN MCCARTHY: Well, [laughs] I'm one of these fellows that just do it and carry on you know.

AMT: Have you had them to deal with?

STAN MCCARTHY: I go I just went to see the surgeon and I go for an operation Wednesday.

AMT: Well I hope it goes well.

STAN MCCARTHY: It should not be a big deal.

AMT: So when you think about this fire, Stan McCarthy, how would you describe it? Does it have a personality? What would you say?

STAN MCCARTHY: I think fires got a mind of its own you know. And it's going to do what it wants to do. You know and if and if you can interrupt that that somehow to make it change directions or slow down, that is what you've got to do. It's a lot of work. I mean I don't think people realize actually how much work it is. You know you get a shovel and a Polanski out and you dig out roots, dig out this, and you spray water here, and you put foam on this. It's a pile of work.

AMT: Hmm. And you say it's got a mind of its own. So you feel like you're fighting force.

STAN MCCARTHY: You do. I mean and it's not a straight line. It doesn't go in a straight line. It goes all over the place. So you never know what will happen as the wind will pick up it'll go ahead of itself. It will stick up hot embers and stuff and throw them way ahead of the fire. So you'll have smaller fires quite a large long ways ahead of it. So you've got to watch those hotspots behind you and then you know deal with them, so you don't have another fire. So you're always constantly looking and you want to make sure your firefighters are safe. That's the main thing to keep everybody safe and nobody gets hurt. And that's what our goal was to put the fire out and keep everybody safe. And I think we did a really good job at that. I just can't say enough about my little fire department, how well we did. You know over 30 guys that stop the amount of fire that they did the first night is just actually a miracle.

AMT: Well tell me about these guys because you're a volunteer force, right?

STAN MCCARTHY: Yeah we're volunteer. We're all volunteers. We just do it for the love of doing it. And my department is trained really well.

AMT: How many years have you been fighting forest fires?

STAN MCCARTHY: I've been in the fire department thirty seven years, now.

AMT: So how does this summer's wildfire situation compare to what you've experienced in the past?

STAN MCCARTHY: Well I was in Kelowna in 2003 and their fire department's been a little over a couple other places. And this is bigger. You know it lasted longer. It is just as intense. It is just as scary. It's just as much work. Yeah it's huge.

AMT: And how many days did you fight this fire?

STAN MCCARTHY: Well, 41 days straight. We went three weeks. A good solid three weeks of 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

AMT: That's got to be exhausting.

STAN MCCARTHY: It was exhausting.

AMT: Stan McCarthy, when you talk about this it's got to be a huge responsibility on your shoulders. You've got to protect your community. You're responsible for your crew. What's that like?

STAN MCCARTHY: Well that's really I really – I feel real proud of my community and my fire department. I think it is a lot of responsibility to do that without the volunteers that help us with the fires like the ladies that come down and cook them and did laundry and help us clean up and stuff like that and the support of the rest the people and different things. Like [unintelligible], gave us our keys to sleep in. The girls, you know they get up at 4:00 o'clock in the morning, cook bacon and sausages and make sure that we get enough to eat and stuff like that. It is just unbelievable. So you've got to be proud of this stuff. And it is kind of honored to be a part of that.

AMT: So in the midst of such disaster you have everybody coming together.

STAN MCCARTHY: Everybody. Just unreal that the spirit of the community. They just all get together and, you know, even we said we felt that after the evacuation, we went around and we realized that all the animals are left; chickens and cats and dogs and horses and cows and pigs and sheep and stuff. And they need to be fed so we watered and fed. I think we fed 1400 chickens here and, you know and pigs and you know. [Chuckles] So, we did a lot besides just fight fire. You know and when the power went off I went and checked every residence in the safety to make sure that they were okay, you know, when the power came back on because you wouldn't know something getting knocked over or something was turned on or whatever. So I checked. We checked every residence in our area. And that's not part of the fight in the fire. That's just what you do for your community.

AMT: Does it get emotional for you?

STAN MCCARTHY: Yeah it does. Yes, yes it does. You know some nights you come home and you think “Home, man I might retire.” But am I ever. You know I'm glad we've done this, or you know we saved this place, or we are we help this person out there we took that person in groceries. I mean stuff like that it's just overwhelming. You know we lost a total of five structures and I couldn't tell you how many we saved. We saved hundreds.

AMT: What did people say to you when they came home after the evacuation order was lifted?

STAN MCCARTHY: Everywhere you go there is thank you to the firefighters. Thank you first responders. Everywhere I go, I get a hug, or you know somebody wants to give you something, or they say you did a good job and you feel really proud of them. It's really, it's actually sometimes I get to step back and say “Holy smokes! We actually did this!”

AMT: And then you look at the sky again, eh, because you just don't know it's like still not fires right now.

STAN MCCARTHY: Yes. Well, you know we're so much – It is so dry here. We haven't had hardly any rain at all. I keep telling him that he is just kind of like a breath away. You know another lightning strike, a flicker of a cigarette, whatever. It could start all over again. I don't think it's over yet. I don't think it is going to be over till snow flies.

AMT: Hmm. Well, I want to ask a little bit more about the smoke inhalation, too. You say one of your crew got asthma from this.

STAN MCCARTHY: Yes. He's got diagnosed with asthma after that. Like he got smoke inhalation and then he took a break and went and seen some doctors and they say he's got asthma. So he's got to deal with that. No, but I don't think it's really bad. And he might get over it, I hope, and a couple of other people who got strep throat and lung infections from the smoke.

AMT: Yes because they're just always - even with masks I guess.

STAN MCCARTHY: Even one that you just can't get out of it. And I think into it and then you work so hard at it you know you get exhausted. And I think the immune system is down a little bit. So you know, you are vulnerable for this stuff. So I think there's going to be a long after effect from the smoke, and I think there's going to be a long after effect with the mental health of some of the guys, because the guys get pretty scared. And we've had the briefers in from WorkSafe in and I know we're going to have to do some follow up with that. So they get some you know one to one counselling or whatever to be mentally capable again and stuff. And I think some of them got pretty scared. A lot of these guys live in this area. One guy was fighting out there and he thought he lost his home because we were right there and we all thought his home burned. And then there's a - we have about another eight guys who lived right in that one little area we're fighting in the first night, and all their homes are at risk. And these guys are “is my home going to be all right?” And then they're still out there fighting the fire for somebody else and not really worrying about their house. But I know they're concerned about them.

AMT: Yes. And also I guess like, how do you sleep at night after you do that kind of thing? And you know how vulnerable the area can be, how do you sleep?

STAN MCCARTHY: Myself personally, I learned [laughs] that my power nap really well. I know I have to do something different at night to shut my mind off, to kind of put it in neutral. You know, like watch TV you know, or do something, wandering around the house a little bit then I can calm myself down and I can go to sleep. But I think some guys don't have the ability to process all that and do that, as well as some others. And I've worked at mental health and stuff like that for years, and so I know how to you know look after myself but I worry about my guys.

AMT: Yes, because we do hear about mental stress and PTSD from that kind of work, huh?

STAN MCCARTHY: Yes. You bet. So, I make sure that we've got the help in for them and if I see any signs of it like, anger outbursts, or different behaviors, or substance abuse or whatever, we will address it and we will make sure they get help.

AMT: Again a lot of responsibility, it is beyond fighting the fire.

STAN MCCARTHY: Well that's what we do.

AMT: How are things in 150 Mile House now?

STAN MCCARTHY: Now it's good. Things seem to be back on more or less normal, but I think everybody in the community is quiet. They know that it could come again. I don't know. We haven't had any rain since - like a good rain, for a long time.

AMT: How has the landscape changed?

STAN MCCARTHY: It's burnt, like quite a bit of the landscape. All you see is the black ground and the trees standing there are all black and all over the place and then different… One spot nice and green and one spots burnt. Like at my place, we had no destruction around my house. It looks exactly the same but down the road you see all the burnt stuff and you think “I'm just really lucky you didn't come here”. But wildlife is acting different. I don't know what'll happen with all the wildlife and things. I see the deers. They seem to be kind of in shock. I have seen a moose with the horns are [unintelligible] and I've seen one horns singed off and one good, and the back of the Moose singed a little bit. And the moose just stood there and it looked like it was in shock. You know I just go by. I bet you I can almost reach out and touched it and I pick up what looked to me like it needed a rest and a drink.

AMT: Yes.

STAN MCCARTHY: But even the squirrels are acting different. They're all over the place and hustling here and there. You know it's just a different behavior.

AMT: Yes. Well, their homes were destroyed too, huh?

STAN MCCARTHY: Yes. So we've seen different flocks of crows already and it's early for this time of year. Right.

AMT: So what's the image that stays with you, after a summer like this?

[Music starts]

STAN MCCARTHY: I don't think I'll ever get over those big huge clouds of smoke like they looked, it looked like an atomic bomb went off. And you see the big bellows of the smoke. You know the big huge things, and you know there's nothing about it. You just have to wait. And I think that a look of fear in some of the people. The concern people had about - worry about losing their places.

AMT: Stan I hope your health improves. And thank you for the work you do.

STAN MCCARTHY: Oh, thank you.

VOICE 9: I can't wait to go home and I don't know when that will be. I can't wait because I just love home. My little homebody with my flowers and my dog and I want to go home [sobs].

VOICE 10: My niece she said: “Auntie, you can make any place feel like home.” Here we are in a tent, and the overwhelming support tour that we've been getting.

[Music]

VOICE 11: Just sucks. It really does. I'm not living in a burning hell ring, for the rest of my life. Like I want to like be able to have nice things and not worry that every summer I'm going to lose it. Not Be worried that every summer there's going to be another fire and it's going to get worse. It is just a lot.

VOICE 12: It was definitely scary but I'm glad we got out safe.

AMT: Stan McCarthy, a fire chief for 150 Mile House in B.C.’s interior. The evacuation order for 150 Mile House was lifted July 27th. There is still more than 3000 British Columbians who cannot return home. There have been new evacuation orders called in the past couple of days. All of this means that firefighters, people like Stan McCarthy, are seeing their work change as the fire seasons become longer, more intense. You can expect many more stories this month on CBC Radio about the future of work, all kinds of work, how it's changing. Across the network, You'll be hearing work shift. And as part of that we'll be talking about everything from climate change to artificial intelligence. You can head to cbc.ca/workshift to find out more. Sign up for the newsletters, well if you like. Well we just heard how difficult it is for firefighters and the toll it can take on them. The people who live in the path of these devastating wildfires know and they are grateful for what is done to try to save their homes. In July Matt Bryant was forced to flee his home at 108 Mile House. From the safety of the Center for evacuees in Kamloops, he had this message:

SOUNDCLIP

For all the volunteers and the fire crew that are working hard to look after the places that we live. We take our hats off to them because they also have families, [sobs] and they're working hard. Everybody. And. I've seen some firefighters yesterday at the Huskie station in Long View. And they were literally black, from head to toe, covered in sweat. These guys are all passing their humps to keep us safe. And I tell you, you generally hear bad stuff in the world, bombings and shootings and whatever have you. And then you see people all come together in a situation like this to look after a soul and keep it safe. We thank everybody that's doing this for us.

AMT: Some words from Matt Bryant, an evacuee from this summer's wildfire in British Columbia. In our next half hour we're talking about some of the unintended results of commercial DNA tests. Why that such seemingly fun kits have become a hit with white supremacists? Wait for that one I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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White nationalists are using DNA ancestry tests to prove 'purity'

Guest: Joan Donovan, Lawrence Brody, Jonathan Marks

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: So Craig Cobb.

VOICE 2: Hmm.

VOICE 1: Craig Paul Cobb has undergone DNA testing to determine genetic ancestry. 86% European.

[Sounds: Laughter, applause, cheering]

VOICE 3: Give it to him. Give it to him.

VOICE 1: 14% sub-Saharan African.

[Sounds: Laughter, cheering]

VOIVE 2: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Hold on.

VOICE 3: [Laughing].

VOICE 1: Yay! Whoo!

VOICE 2: This is called statistical noise.

VOICE 1: Sweetheart, you have a little black in you.

[Sounds: Cheering]

AMT: While the man there is Craig Cobb, a well-known white supremacist who agreed to an appearance and a DNA test on a US daytime TV talk show. And the twist as you heard is that Craig Cobb may not be as, what he calls racially pure, as he believed himself to be. Commercial DNA tests such as the one used on that show have been growing in popularity for years. You've seen the ads all over TV you've heard them on podcasts. You may even have felt the pull of your own curiosity and ordered a DNA kit for yourself to find out where in the world your ancestors truly came from. But as they become more popular, commercial DNA tests may also be becoming more problematic with questions about their scientific reliability and signs that they're becoming a tool for white supremacists, such as Craig Cobb, to prove their purity and draw lines with around that narrative of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Joan Donovan is at the data and Society Research Institute. She's a sociologist. Her title is media manipulation research lead and she has looked at, among other things, white nationalist interpretations of genetic ancestry tests. She joins us from Beverly, Massachusetts. Hello.

JOAN DONOVAN: Hi how's it going?

AMT: Well I'm curious, so, first of all so what made you want to focus on white nationalist reaction to DNA ancestry tests?

JOAN DONOVAN: So, this project we completed it over the last two years and much of the field of how do we interpret our identity in light of new scientific findings, focuses on and in this instance how African-Americans take these tests. There's wonderful research by Alondra Nelson who studies how they, African-Americans, will take these tests in order to understand more about family heritage and also where some of their family members may have come from because of the slave trade, many records were intentionally destroyed. So her research would focus on that population. There's another researcher, Kim Talbert, who researches how Native Americans use DNA testing and how legislators have tried to force Native American communities to use DNA testing to mark membership within tribes. And so her research addresses how they push back on the science. And so my co-author Aaron Penasco and I were very interested in trying to think through the problem of: How do white people take these tests? But we didn't want to focus on just any population of white people. We understand that there's a diversity of identities within all groups. And so we wanted to know how white people with a political agenda of whiteness take these tests and incorporate their findings into their biography, and then also into their world view about how these tests may help them visualize different forms of states and nations where different people have access to resources and rights based on their racial or ethnic purity.

AMT: Okay, and you were looking at the white supremacist website Stormfront. Were you not?

JOAN DONOVAN: Yes. So we started in 2015 and Stormfront is one of the oldest message boards online. Its history is the history of the Internet, in the sense that there have been attempts to push it off line. There have been attempts to subvert it over the years but it stays intact because they, for much of their existence, have owned their own infrastructure. Don Black, he was a former KKK Grand Wizard. He's the founder of the website. And he learned to code in prison and he knew that the Internet was the new frontier of white nationalism, back in the 90s. So, we use this Web site in particular one, because it's the biggest white nationalist website too. Because if you go there, which you can't right now because it has been no platform and its domain name has been repossessed…

AMT: Yes I was just going to say that happened last week, huh?

JOAN DONOVAN: Yes, it did. So, it doesn't mean they've lost their archives or their web architecture it just means that their domain name no longer works. So all of their hyperlinks no longer work. You can't access the website easily. And I know they're trying to get their domain name back.

AMT: Can I just ask you as well, talk about White Nationalists, I use the word white supremacist. Do you make a distinction with those phrases or not?

JOAN DONOVAN: No. We use white nationalists because Stormfront in particular uses this phrasing and they say that they are the new voice of the white minority. The particulars of these movements of white nationalism are very much embedded in a politics of America and a politics of place. And so, for my purposes of understanding how the study links to DNA testing, nationalisms is an important part of it because the tests mark you by region, but they're all white supremacists in the sense that they have genocidal ideations. They believe that there should be no racial mixture between populations. They seek out a place where white people and only white people can live like a white ethno state.

AMT: Right. So how are they interpreting the results when they get what we just heard Greg Cobb get?

JOAN DONOVAN: Yes. So there is a way that we have seen it appear time and time again is that America is a White Nationalist is a place of blood and a spirit. The place is the soil. The blood is European and the spirit is one of conquest and empire. And so by proving your lineage through Europe you also make a claim to America as a place that your forefathers have colonized. And so this allows them leeway in thinking about you know Native Americans claim to land for instance is illegitimate in their minds because they came and conquered. And so the ties between the European blood and the proving that you are 100 percent European are really important for making claims about America as a nation that belongs to white Europeans.

AMT: And so when you look at the reactions, as you trap's this, because you did it over several years. I guess beginning ‘04 away to 2016. Were you surprised at some of the reactions you got? What did you see?

JOAN DONOVAN: Yes, they tended to fall into a few main strains. So, the first is I took that test. But it must be a multicultural conspiracy because look my results say that my ancestry is from all over the map. So the more they get results that prove things that don't align with what their families have told them, they will completely dismiss the test as a conspiracy to confuse white people about their racial history. So there's this dismissal. Then there are people that will accept that the test results are true but question the distribution of percentages, and wonder maybe at some point anthropologists and archaeologists have gotten the story wrong. So, maybe the migration patterns and the populations that they're testing for are wider than we think they are. So, that the science itself is at question. Craig Cobb in that clip is a very typical example where they will say “Well that's just statistical noise”, right. They're using a scientific frame of mind because they know there are margins of error and so they will say “Okay. Anything less than 5 percent doesn't count”. Which goes against the fundamental belief that they've had for the last hundred years which is that one drop will make you impure.

AMT: Actually it's interesting because in your study you noticed sort of a more sophisticated interpretation than people give those groups credit for.

JOAN DONOVAN: Yes. I think what's interesting is that from a sociological point of view, but also people who study science, is that scientists have the very same questions. So, it's not that they're asking the wrong questions. It's really that they're mobilizing the results in a way to think about the exclusion of certain populations from America. So, it's okay to ask these scientific questions and say “Do we know enough about migrations through different parts of Europe?” in order to say with any certainty that these people are descendants of the Caucus region, right. That's an appropriate scientific question. When white nationalists use it, they're using it in order to create different categories by which we can mark inclusion and exclusion in American citizenship, which is not the way these tests have been intended to use. But it is in line with the way the test results make you think about borders and states. Many of these testing companies will return a map to you with contemporary borders and then you will think “Okay. I am from this region. I am from Poland.” For instance “I am from Hungary”, but we know that the DNA itself is older than the borders, in a sense, and so it gives a sense of nationalism and a sense of race to the results of the test because they're marked by contemporary struggles over place and race and ethnicity.

AMT: Okay, well I'm going to pick up on that with our next guest. Joan Donovan, thanks for your time today.

JOAN DONOVAN: Thank you very much.

AMT: Joan Donovan, sociologist. Her title is media manipulation research lead. She's at the data and Society Research Institute. She did this while she was a post-doctoral fellow at the UCLA Institute for Study and for Society in Genetics. We reached her in Beverly, Massachusetts. Well as we continue to dig into the subject of commercial DNA tests, some of their and unanticipated effects one big question remains and that's really about how accurate the current results are. My next guest knows the ins and outs of the human genome better than most. Lawrence Brody is the director of the division of genomics and Society at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the National Human Genome Research Institute and he joins us from Baltimore. Hello.

LAWRENCE BRODY: Good morning.

AMT: So, can you just tell us briefly how these tests actually work?

LAWRENCE BRODY: So, the tests that are used commercially, we use a DNA chip to look at multiple different spots on your genome. So, your genome is actually a very big place. Each of us have six billion letters in our genome. And for most of us, everyone listening, we're ninety nine point nine percent identical in all of those letters. But that fraction of a percent that we differ melts to a lot of different letters in different places. What the tests do is look at what type of letter you have at all those places that we differ, or subset of those places that we differ. They do so because those places in which different people will have different letters actually tell a story of where ancestors came from. That's because humans have migrated, as Joan mentioned, throughout the globe coming out of Africa anywhere from 100000 to 60000 years ago. And as humans migrated across the globe, some of these spelling changes in the genome accumulated and they actually mark the migration routes. So there are some spelling changes that are more common in different regions because, until recently, humans weren't that immobile. And when I say recently I mean the last thousand years, or so. People would tend to stay in the same place for many many generations. And so that gave us a set of markers that we call them in the genome that roughly translate into where a person's ancestors lived thousands years ago.

AMT: And how accurate is that?

LAWRENCE BRODY: The Course Level it's actually quite accurate. And when I say course I mean trying to decide what continent your ancestors came from. So we can place humans broadly into three continents Asia, Africa and Europe. As you start to get down to the finer gradations, as your previous guest mentions, it starts to get a little fuzzy. And so it is probably true that the small percentage, saying that you're 2% or 3% this or that, could really be somewhat in the statistical noise and had some degree of uncertainty. But by assigning portions of your genetic ancestry to different continents that tends to be pretty accurate.

AMT: And so we just heard Joan Donovan talk about the relationship between White Nationalists and this kind of DNA ancestry testing. Do you have concerns about the unintended consequences of some of this stuff?

LAWRENCE BRODY: I think I have concerns over interpreting them in a certain way to mean something is more superior or less superior or even more pure or less pure. The markers that are tested are almost 100% meaningless from the point of view of biology. They're just noise that is generated in your genome through history that probably doesn't mean much. It also would be concerned that people are intermixing three different concepts. So genetic ancestry, which is Joan mentioned, is the most scientifically solid from the point of view it's just about ancient history, gets intermixed with the other concepts of race and ethnicity, both of which are more artificial and more constructed by people and have changed through time. So your genome gives you an echo of thousand to 10000 years ago. Your ethnicity and your race are things that have been invented and changed over modern times. So understanding where you came from is can be educational can be fun but I'm not sure it has any bearing on anything else in your life.

AMT: Hmmm. Interesting. So are you saying that the actual test can be accurate it's the interpretation of those of that that little sliver of accuracy that becomes the problem. What we what we pile onto it or what some people do.

LAWRENCE BRODY: Yes. I mean knowing that 2000 years ago, or a thousand years ago, you had ancestors who you probably didn't even know about where they lived. I'm not sure how that says anything about who you are or what your worth is.

AMT: So tell us a little bit more, you make the point that we should differentiate among you know race nationality ancestry, is there a genetic basis for race?

LAWRENCE BRODY: There's not really a genetic basis for race. Race is an artificial construct that various societies have concocted to explain how groups are different. Now, they are interconnected in that your ancestry tells you a little bit about your differences and your appearance, but it doesn't go much beyond the superficial. So the ancestry part that is associated with your appearance, really is that. It's not much more than skin deep, whereas racial classifications are essentially through history have been used mostly for ill, as far as I know - and your next guest would probably be an expert on this - but really are artificial and have changed, even in the last hundred years in the United States have changed. The other issue that we have is that we ask people to classify themselves as a given race. I'll give you an example of where this is problematic. Garcia is the most common surname in Madrid. So, someone who comes from Madrid, who speaks Spanish at home, who lives in North America, might classify themself as Hispanic. Someone who comes from Guatemala who has the same surname, Garcia also might classify themselves as Hispanic. The person from Guatemala, their ancestry may be a 100% native Guatemalan and their family has been there for 5000 years. So, they're 100 percent Native person, whereas the person from Madrid, who has the same surname, could be 100% European and yet both would self-identify as Hispanic. So there's where the two concepts between ancestry and race, whether it's self-classified or classified by other breaks down.

AMT: Hmm. I will pick up this with our next guest Lawrence Brody, thanks for your insights into this.

LAWRENCE BRODY: You're welcome.

AMT: Lawrence Brody director of the division of genomics and Society at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the National Human Genome Research Institute. He joined us from Baltimore.

SOUNDCLIP

They can definitely be life changing. So many people have learned unexpected things about their families, their parents. People that were adopted out, that they weren't aware of or that they have a paternal half sibling that their father may have fathered children unknowingly. And so I wouldn't call it dangerous. But as I said I do think people have to be aware of the possible implications. If people are not prepared to learn that their family could be more complex or maybe have some secrets or mysteries that they aren't aware of, it may not be the best thing for them to do.

AMT: That is a CeCe Moore founder of the popular website DNA Detectives. She also works as a consultant for the PBS TV show Finding Your Roots, and it features DNA testing. But as you heard her say, their test results can come with some big surprises. My next guest’s advice for commercial DNA tests in general is: Buyer beware. Jonathan Marks is a professor of biological anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He's the author of Is Science Racist. We've reached him in Charlotte, North Carolina. Hi.

JONATHAN MARKS: Hello.

AMT: So, what's wrong with finding out about one's past?

JONATHAN MARKS: Nothing's wrong with finding about your past, but remember we tend to mythologize our past, personally, and I think there's also a lot of mythology that goes into the DNA ancestry past that we were receiving.

AMT: Have you done these tests?

JONATHAN MARKS: I have yes. I did 23 in Me and The Genographic but not out of pocket with other people's money.

AMT: And what did you find?

JONATHAN MARKS: I find exactly what I already know. You know, it tells me I'm mostly Ashkenazi Jewish. I already knew that. So, in that sense, when it also tells me I'm just a little smidgen Korean, I was able to look at that and say: “Well if I'm 95 percent Ashkenazi Jewish and 5 percent Korean, is that the same as being 100 percent Ashkenazi Jewish and zero percent Korean?” Which is more or less what the white supremacist was saying at the very beginning of the show, how much statistical noise is there? And that's a very reasonable question to ask of scientific data.

AMT: Talk to me a little bit about - Because of your anthropology background, I want to get into more of this the issue of migration and how this plays into this testing or does not play in.

JONATHAN MARKS: Well, I think it's a bit of an overstatement to say that human populations of the past were more or less standing still. That's probably more so in the last two or three thousand years, but certainly most of our ancestry involved hunting and gathering economic systems. And hunters and gatherers are notoriously immobile. I mean we're talking about people moving around, you know, the landscape in the old days. So one of the things I think as an anthropologist began to realize about 40 years ago is that it's very easy to underestimate the extent to which human populations have been moving around in the past. So I think the idea that my ancestors are and always have been from this village is going to be an overstatement.

AMT: And so do you see something missing in the science?

JONATHAN MARKS: Well the science is different from the way that we usually think of science you know. So this is genetics and it's science but not as traditionally understood, because in science what we tend to do is pose a problem and we collect the data that we think can solve the problem. But here what we're doing is getting some data, the DNA chip with your nucleotide polymorphisms on. Okay, so you've got the data and then you're going to start asking it questions. So there's a strong temptation then, when you reverse the process, to see the data as a sort of Ouija board or a magic 8 ball that you can just ask questions to. And like Ouija board, you're always going to get an answer, but it's up to you to render the answer meaningful.

AMT: This is why you call this corporate science and recreational science.

JONATHAN MARKS: Well they call it recreational ancestry testing.

AMT: And you call it corporate science [chuckles].

JONATHAN MARKS: Well it is, I mean it's a profit making venture. I mean there are companies behind this and I don't want to tell you that academic science is, or ever, has been pure but at least we didn't have this conflict of interest to worry about. You know, when profits are on the table the truth can get compromised. And in this case, you can ask questions of the data and there are different kinds of questions you can ask that you're going to get different levels of truth to in your answer. So for example, if you ask the question “Is this person my father?” You're probably going to get a very reliable scientific answer from the DNA data. If you ask the question “Will I get schizophrenia?” They may give you an answer but the answer may not be accurate, and if you ask “Am I part Cherokee?” Which is I think sort of where we're going here. You'll probably get a much less reliable answer. So, as I say, it's kind of like a Ouiji board.

AMT: Okay, well, Jonathan Marks, thanks for your insights. That is Jonathan Marks. He's a professor of biological anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He's the author of Is Science Racist, and he joined us from Charlotte, North Carolina. That is our program for today stay with Radio 1 for Q. Tom Power today speaks with Daniel Handler, the author behind Lemony Snicket and a Series of Unfortunate Events novels is back with a new book for a decidedly more adult audience called All the Dirty Parts. So wait for Tom power today with Daniel Handler. Remember you can always take the current with you to go on the free CBC Radio app. You can stream CBC radio on the Radio Player Canada app, as well. Now we began today by talking about Afghanistan and U.S. president Donald Trump's pledge to send more American troops to fight the Taliban, sixteen years after the war there began. As of August more than 23 hundred U.S. forces personnel have been killed in Afghanistan. We'll give the last word today to a U.S. soldier, Jay Bennett from Akron, Ohio, who recorded this in his first tour of the war. He was asked to describe his best and worst days of the war for him so far. Here he is. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, thank you for listening to The Current.

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[Sound: Gunshots, indistinct chatter]

JAY BENNETT: Worst day definitely and first Lieutenant was hit, lost two soldiers. And then, another day when second [unintelligible] was hit. Also a few of my leadership was also injured. Now it is definitely [unintelligible] the worst week.

[Sound: Engine]

VOICE: The best?

JAY BENNETT: Definitely. I mean just knowing that you're getting out of this district and going back to CAF, felt good and then getting ready to get on the plane to go home is definitely good.

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September 4, 2017 Episode Transcript

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