“We were not careful in Lebanon.” With that quiet indictment, former U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker begins a story that doesn’t read like memoirs, but like real lessons from the heart of war.

In this episode of The Diplomat, Crocker recounts surviving the 1983 U.S. Embassy bombing in Beirut, exposing how Syria used terror as a foreign policy tool, and warning why Bashar al-Assad was never the reformer the West wanted to believe.

From the disillusionment in Iraq—“We weren’t seen as liberators”—to the chaos of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Crocker draws a map of where American strategy unraveled. His lesson? Wars begin in politics. And they end in politics.

This is a story about what it means to stay when others leave, speak when others fall silent, and learn from failure without flinching.

• Joe Kawly brings extensive experience from conflict zones in the Middle East to the power corridors of Washington. As a journalist, he’s seen how words can escalate a crisis or open the door to peace. A Georgetown graduate and former CNN Journalism Fellow, he’s known for connecting the dots others miss, so people don’t just hear what happened, they understand why it matters. As producer and host of The Diplomat, Joe brings clarity to diplomacy and politics, one conversation at a time.