MAJ Nathanael Tagg served as the personnel officer (S1) and Delta Company commander with 1-32 Infantry in Khost, Afghanistan during 2006 and 2007 and as brigade chief of operations in Khost, Afghanistan during 2011, both in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). In this May 2012 interview, MAJ Tagg discusses the threat situation and conditions in his company's area of operations during the first deployment, his experiences working with the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police (ANP), and the situation when he went back four years later. MAJ Tagg concludes his interview with the observation, "We're doing great things in a large portion of that country, and I got it, newspapers are there to sell papers and make money, so they're going to focus on that stuff, but it really does degrade from what we're doing and from what Afghanistan needs. I don't think any of us that have been there want to think, "Ah, screw Afghanistan." I really want it to be a nice, great country some day. They just have to get there on their own, once we get them to the point where they can do that. Afghanistan should be the eco-tourism place of the world. It's a beautiful country where they haven't had war and they haven't chopped down all the trees and destroyed all the fields and agriculture and infrastructure. It really does have the potential to be a fantastically beautiful place. But right now it's not that way. You still have all the scars of 30 or 40 years of war. That's the challenge, I guess. You're starting from scratch essentially. Who remembers peace there?"

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