rant · moment 3 of 16
His Own 9/11-Era Awakening: Cocaine, Tom Friedman, and Wanting to Join the CIA
from #265 - Austin Taliban | The Tim Dillon Show · #265
10 min
Tim recounts his teenage self as a closeted cocaine addict on Long Island who romanticized joining the CIA/military after 9/11, reads a viral thread from a veteran deployed twice to Afghanistan describing the war's futility, and reflects on his own naive patriotism.
- Tim's awakening to U.S. foreign policy began in 11th grade when the Afghanistan war started, suddenly making it real rather than theoretical.
- At 17 and addicted to cocaine, Tim thought Tom Friedman's New York Times columns about interconnectedness and geopolitics were brilliant.
- Tim believed that if America helped free people around the world, they would love us again—a belief he now attributes to his drug use.
- Post-9/11 patriotic moments felt beautiful to Tim because the country had just attacked itself and was healing together.
- In high school study hall, Tim looked up CIA requirements because he wanted to live a life of meaning, purpose, honor, and valor.
- Tim imagined the CIA as a crack squad jumping through windows to stop bombs on buses, like saving the old Black bus driver Keith.
- From his school library, drugged and eating phenomenal chicken parm lunches, Tim stared at the computer dreaming of a life of meaning and intrigue.
- A friend Tim visited at Camp Lejeune had deployed to Afghanistan twice, in 2008 and 2009-10, when it was already obvious the Taliban would sweep back in after withdrawal.
- The thread describes searching detainees' phones and finding mostly Bollywood musicals and women singing in fields—rarely anything incriminating.
- Every U.S. opium policy option in Afghanistan led to Taliban victory: leaving fields alone funded weapons, bombing them recruited farmers, fertilizer incentives went to explosives making.
AfghanistanU.S. foreign policyTalibanCIA9/11Thomas FriedmanPentagonExxon MobilOsama bin LadenNew York TimesHoly Trinity High SchoolCamp Lejeune