Transcripts For CSPAN3 Jerry 20240703

Of bidens fiasco and the american heroes that fought to the end. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Host jerry, what is your expertise . Ms. Dunleavy i was an Investigative Reporter for a decade. I went on to coauthor this excellent book with my friend james. I recently was hired by the House Foreign Affairs committee to help with the leading there afghanistan withdrawal investigation. Just yesterday we had an incredible roundtable with the goldstar families of the 13 servicemembers killed august 26, 2021. The only caveat i will give as i am just here as the coauthor. I am not talking on behalf of the committee. Host we covered that on cspan, that hearing, and if anybody is interested you can look at that on cspan. Org or our app. James, you are a former u. S. Army captain and served in afghanistan. Tell us what you did and where you served. Mr. Hasson i served in coast province. Two provinces on the border from 2014 to 2015. I have a lot of family members still serving actively and several, including, in the special forces community including close friends, in the special forces community. Host you are not there during the withdrawal. Mr. Hasson i was already out. Host how long did you stay in afghanistan . Mr. Hasson nine months. Host lets talk about the book called kabul. Do you chronicle the entire war or is this just about the withdrawal . Mr. Dunleavy i wish we could have done a book that went through the 20 years of war. It would have had to be 10,000 pages long but there were 20 years of war, 20 years of death, 20 years of mistakes. But this book focuses on the withdrawal from afghanistan because, at the end of the day, the way this ended with tens of thousands of afghan allies left behind, well over 1000 americans left behind, us cutting the legs out from under the Afghan Military when we did our rapid retrograde, the abandonment of bagram, and then this isis k terrorist attack that killed close to 200 afghans. And then the taliban taking over again after 20 years of work. It did not have to end this way. Host President Trump kind of defense the afghanistan withdrawal defends the afghanistan withdrawal saying the agreement with the taliban was all to blame for how the withdrawal played out. What are your thoughts . Mr. Dunleavy the Biden Administration does not have a defense. It is really indefensible the way this all ended. What they point to is the delhi agreement struck between the u. S. Doha agreement struck between the u. S. And the taliban. We think it was a flawed agreement to say the least. However, there were conditions and the taliban did not meet any of them. One of them was the continued alliance the taliban has with al qaeda. They were allied with them before 9 11, they continued their alliance for 20 years, and it continues today, despite President Bidens claims during the withdrawal that al qaeda was gone from afghanistan. This was not true. The alliance was never broken. Because the taliban was not following the terms of the delhi doha agreement, this was a choice that President Biden made to pick the 20s anniversary of 9 11 to withdraw in the middle of afghan fighting season. These are choices President Biden made. He was not painted into a corner. Host james, do you guys agree the United States should have pulled out and your beef is how it pulled out . Or you think troops should have remained in afghanistan . Mr. Hasson great question because i think it is a difficult one. As jerry mentioned, a lot of the things we were doing in terms of nationbuilding, trying to create democracy, we are just not working. There is a great case to be made that if we kept a couple thousand troops there, we couldve prevented what happened. But as we outlined in the prologue of kabul is that it does not matter what side of the debate you come down on. Personally having served there and see everything up close i leaned closer to lets get out. That said, no matter what side of the debate you come down on things did not have to happen the way they did. The withdrawal and the americans left behind, the americans killed, wounded, all of that can be laid as we lay out in kabul can be laid squarely at the feet of the Biden Administration. Host if you would like to call in and ask a question, you can do so. Our lines are by party affiliation. Republicans 202 7488001, democrats 202 7488000, independents 202 7488002. We also have a line if you are an Afghanistan War veteran. You can call on our line 202 7488003. That is also the line used to send us a text. Lets hear from President Biden and then i will get your reaction. This is from august 31, 2021. He announces that withdrawal from afghanistan. [video clip] pres. Biden i take responsibility for the decision. Some say we should have started sooner and could this have been done in a more orderly manner . I respectfully disagree. Imagine if we had begun evacuations in june or july, bringing thousands of american troops and evacuating more than 120,000 in the middle of a civil war. There still would have been a rush to the airport. A breakdown of confidence and control of the government. And it still would have been difficult and dangerous. The bottom line is there is no evacuation from the end of the war that you can run without the complexities, challenges, and threats we faced. None. There are those who say we should have stayed indefinitely. They ask, why dont we just keep doing what we were doing . Why do we have to change anything . The fact is everything had changed. My predecessor had made a deal with the taliban. When i came into office we faced a deadline, may 1. The taliban onslaught was coming. We faced one of two choices follow the agreement of the Previous Administration and extend or extend and have more time for people to get out. Or send in thousands of more troops and escalate the war. To those asking for a third decade of war in afghanistan i ask, what is the Vital National interest . In my view, we only have one to make sure afghanistan can never be used again to launch an attack on our homeland. Remember why we went to afghanistan in the first place. Because we were attacked by Osama Bin Laden and al qaeda on september 11, 2001. They were based in afghanistan. We delivered justice to bin laden on may 2, 2011, over a decade ago. Al qaeda was decimated. Host that was the president from two years ago. Jerry, your reaction. Mr. Dunleavy President Bidens whole argument is that everything that happened in 2021 was inevitable. That the chaos and death we saw was inevitable and there was nothing he could have done to change it. As we lay out in kabul, that is simply not true. I will give you one example. All of President Bidens advisors and military commanders were telling him about the importance of holding onto bagram air brace. Bagram airbase. Because of his decisions bagram was closed. Everybody told President Biden that bagram is a safer place to do an evacuation from than a small airport in the middle of kabul. If we had maintained bagram, it would have meant a safer evacuation, a more orderly one. We would have had far fewer americans left behind, far fewer afghan allies left behind. We could have kept the taliban onslaught at bay to likely stop them from taking kabul, which would have made everything safer, and the isis k terrorist who killed those 13 americans august 26, the Biden Administration has not admitted his identity. I think potentially because he was in prison at bagram when we abandoned bagram. And he was one of them. When the taliban took over they took over august 15. The first thing they did was open those doors and freed the thousands of terrorists, including the one that killed those americans. Host but does it work to hang on to bagram in the middle of the taliban takeover . How many troops would you have needed . Mr. Dunleavy great question and absolutely it would have worked. You need at least a few thousand troops. Ideally 3500 but at minimum 2200. Host even when the whole country was being taken over by the taliban . Mr. Dunleavy if we rewind, when we decided to abandon bagram the whole country had not been taken over yet. Bagram is defensible. It was built by the soviets when they were in afghanistan in the 1980s and has dozens of runways. It is close to kabul. The reason why that is an easy evacuation is number one, we would have more assets in the air to be able to prevent the taliban thunder run, if you want to call it that, to kabul. We would have been able to evacuate more people quickly instead of using a single strip airfield in the middle of a dense urban environment with high ground on all sides. Just add one thing quickly, every military commander who talked to President Biden and we know this for a fact pleaded with him to keep bagram open. He did not because he wanted a certain trip cap number, 600, which meant there were four diplomats to every soldier at that point. You cannot keep bog room open with only 600 soldiers. That is the long and short of it. Host there is a lot of viewers that want to talk to you. We will start with carl in hannibal, new york. Democrat. Caller i dont know where to begin. Number one, shouldve, couldve, wouldve. Trillions of dollars wasted in afghanistan and you know what . You are monday morning quarterbacking. You know what should have been done. President biden did the wrong thing. President biden made the hard choice and he left afghanistan. Maybe he did not do it the way you wanted it done but it had to be done and he pulled the trigger. That is number one. My second point is this. You started off this program without President Biden is trying to reduce drug prices to help everyday americans. And then you have to counterbalance it with this tripe . You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. You really need to do better. Host lets have a response. Monday morning quarterbacking. Mr. Dunleavy this is not monday morning quarterbacking. Everything that happened here President Biden was warned in real time by people on the ground and his military commanders. The House Foreign Affairs committee had testimony from command Sergeant Major jake smith last month. He was the command Sergeant Major who, at the time in 2021, was overseeing the u. S. Closure of military bases across afghanistan. He was tasked with closing bagram. He testified in early 2021 the state Department Officials from the embassy in kabul came to visit him at bagram to do a site survey about where to do an evacuation. He told them in no Uncertain Terms you cannot do this evacuation through kabul airport. You have got to hold bagram. It is safer. It is more orderly. It is extremely defensible and of course, as i mentioned earlier, the prisoners at bagram still would have been behind bars rather than trying to kill americans. President biden knew this and was being warned about this and he moved forward with it anyway. That goes for pretty much every decision he made. He was told that a rapid troop withdrawal from afghanistan in the middle of afghan fighting season, a choice that he made, that that would be a disastrous idea and likely bring about the rapid collapse of the Afghan Military and Afghan Government. These are things he knew in real time. This is not james and i monday morning quarterbacking. This is us pointing out that the facts were known in President Biden ignored them. Mr. Hasson if i could add to that quickly. One thing that we took pains to do in kabul was stick directly to the facts and let the men and women who were there at the gates, on the ground, or in the decision rooms speak for themselves. If you read the book, you are not going to see any opinion ating from us about what went down. To be frank, we also criticized secretary pompeo and the Trump Administration for the doha agreement. Our goal is to tell the story without fanfare or favor. If this had been a Different Administration and the same things that happened, we would have told the same story. Host paul is in arizona, democrat line. Caller morning. I like the guy before that called in. I hear a lot of ifs and buts. 021, troop levels were down to 500 troops in country. How do you expect to hold Bagram Air Force base with 2500 troops . And possible. That is why they deserted. Trump drew down the troops, not biden. He was left when he entered with 2500 troops in country and you expect him to hold bagram . Host james . Mr. Hasson i appreciate the thought and the question. One thing i will say in response is that, as i mentioned a few minutes ago, 2200 was the minimum that the pentago told d the Biden White House they needed to hold bagram. It is not an ideal number but it is a manageable number. 2200 is not 600. At the end of the day, you know, absolutely. If President Trump had withdrawn down to 600 i did not agree withdrawing as quickly as they did. But there were 2500 there at the time. That was enough to hold bagram and every military commander urged President Biden to hold onto bagram. He had the ability to do so but he did not because he wanted an artificial troop cap at 600. That is what they had and the result speak for themselves. Host ed is an afghanistan vet in florida. Arent you under evacuation orders . Caller not yet. [laughs] host stay safe. Caller thank you. Host go ahead. Caller i support what your two are saying. I traveled up to bagram on a regular basis and saying that bagram was the safest place in afghanistan at the time we were there. [indiscernible] answering the question about 2500, evidently, he does not understand military tactics and we have air superiority. I would support with the men said. Bagram is probably the most secure area. The Sergeant Major hit it on the head. Thank you. Host jerry, your response . Mr. Dunleavy i hope you stay safe in florida. Thanks for what you did over there. Really appreciate that. I think your insights are spot on. Bagram would have been the right place to do an evacuation from. Everybody told that to President Biden. He knew that and he chose differently. The closure of bagram meant the United States presence in afghanistan was shrunk down to an embassy and airport in kabul. We saw with the impact of that was. The rapid u. S. Troop withdrawal without any plan to continue to support the Afghan Military, which we had built around u. S. Support. The u. S. Troop withdrawal meant pulling contractors, troops, logistics, advisors. Everything was gone in rapid fashion. The closure of bagram meant that the u. S. s ability to project power was gone. Our ability to do a safe evacuation was gone. To protect those prisons full of terrorists that we had spent years capturing and throwing in jail, that ability was gone too. Host joyce is an independent in louisville, kentucky. Caller good morning. First time caller. Will be 78yearsold on sunday. You people are crazy. This is just a slap something on biden. Did you see the color of the people that got killed that day . None of those people were black. Black people are not going to put up with this mess you are talking about doing in the army. All of you socalled caucasians want to do is to go around the world and control the world. Host i want to show a clip from secretary lloyd austin in front of the Senate Armed Services committee september 2021 where he talks about the end of the u. S. War in afghanistan. [video clip] sec extending beyond august would have imperiled our people and our mission. The taliban made clear their cooperation with end on the first of september. As you know we face great and growing threats from isis. Staying longer than we did wouldve made it more dangerous for our people. It would not have significantly changed a number of evacuees we could get out. As we consider these tactical issues today, we must also ask ourselves equally tough questions about war itself. Think about the lessons we have learned the past 20 years. Did we have the right strategy . Did we have too many strategies . Did we put too much faith in our ability to build effective afghan institutions, and army, air force, police force, and Government Administration . We help build the state but we cannot forge a nation. The fact that the afghan army that we and our partners trained melted away, as communicators without firing a shot, took us all by surprise and it would be dishonest the claim otherwise. We need to consider some uncomfortable truths. That we do not fully comprehend the corruption and poor leadership in senior ranks. We did not grasp the effects of frequent and unexplained rotations by president of his commanders. We do not anticipate the effect caused by the deals that the taliban commanders struck with local leaders. Andy doha agreement is self had a demoralizing effect on Afghan Soldiers. Finally, we felt to grasp there is only so much for which and for whom many of the Afghan Forces provided the Afghan Military with the equipment and aircraft and skills to use it. Over the years they often fought bravely. Tens of thousands of Afghan Soldiers and police died but in the end we cannot provide them with the will to win, at least not all of them. As a veteran of that war, and personally reckoning with all of it. Host that was defense secretary austin about two years ago in front of the senate. James, a lot of their to unpack. Your initial thoughts. Guest the first thing i will note is that secretary austin talks about we could not stay past the 31st and because the taliban were going to be attacking us. That is a whole other issue to talk about but one thing i want to point out is that as of august 24, one week prior, admiral who was in charge of the forces in afghanistan, who was in charge of all of our operations in afghanistan, determined that we would impossible to evacuate and rescue every american citizen by the 31st. And that determination was relayed to the white house and yet at the same time the white house continued to tell the American People that we could get every american out by the 31st. Jake sullivan said that on the 24th. Jim psaki lectured reporters telling them that it was responsible to suggest americans would be stranded when as we point out, with the documents to show for it, they knew this was not a visible think. That is the first think i would like to bring up. Secretary austin has great points about the 20 years of failure but in one think i did not hear was the one think i did not hear was the buck stops here if you are secretary of defense, and you are in charge of an evacuation to rescue american citizens, it is never been done before. Host to be fair at did call it a strategic failure it is never been done the general did call it a strategic failure. He also said that everybody was surprised at how the afghan army just melted away. This was after years of training and a lot of money from the United States. Getting them into the point of becoming a professional army and they just disappeared. Guest i can tell you from a firsthand experience that what what is on paper does not always reflect reality or did not always reflect reality in terms of Afghan Military, but more to the point, and again, it is something we bring up in kabul, this is a known fact. The idea that we were surprised afghan army was not as strong as it appeared on paper. It is just simply not true. There are things called ghost units where you have entire battalions on paper of Afghan Military units units that did nt exist in reality because the colonel who not only in charge will pocket the salaries and again, their reports detailing this in the years up to the evacuation. The idea that we do not know they are going to fall is just it defies reality and general Scotty Miller in charge of the kenaston until he resigned in the summer of 2031 was tracking every district that fell and trying to sound the alarm to the white house. Host go ahead, jerry. Guest i would add is invited main a promise in 2021, august to get all americans out of afghanistan. It is a promise the biden demonstration continued to make even after they knew that it is a promise they were not going to be able to fulfill. On Afghan Military front, we knew about the problems the Afghan Military had. To be clear, some Afghan Soldiers and units did fight the taliban, sometimes ferociously in 2021. There were a lot of Afghan Soldiers who died in 2021. It is also true a lot of afghan units simply collapse. I would point out that the Biden Administration with this rapid withdrawal kick the legs out from under an already weak and shaky the terry and we had no plan about how to continue to support them military and we had no plan about how to continue to support them. Throughout 2020 one, biden and people around him continue to assess the Afghan Military was 200,000 people strong and it is what we can count on them to fight the taliban. They knew that 300,000 figure they repeated over and over again was made up. The ghost soldiers problems, the fact they were combining the Afghan Military numbers with Afghan Police numbers and conflating them into 300,000 figure and the fact that the Afghan Military was starting to collapse throughout 2021 yet they continue to assess on fictional 300,000 figure. It is one of the many sort of falsehood is the Biden Administration was pushing to get peoples get in peoples head things are ok about reality on the ground is that the taliban was taking over and we did not have a plan about how to get our afghan allies out, are americas out. Host sal in massachusetts. Democrats line. Caller good morning. Being an expiring, i am ashamed of you two sitting here spouting this nonsense being an x marine, i am ashamed of you to sitting at your this nonsense. You would note no one has ever been able to get in there and stay in their including alexander the great. He was there and had to get out. He had to marry in princess daughter to make peace. You two are bogus. Host i have a question for you. You are talking about the war in afghanistan and how it was conducted. What are your thoughts on the withdrawal from afghanistan . Caller we had to withdraw. There was no other choice. Host no, how it was conducted. Caller there no good way to get out. Look at vietnam. When we got out of vietnam there is no way to get out good way to get out. Host was there a good way to get out . Guest i like he brought up vietnam and it gets to President Bidens head, something we wrote about in the book is at the end of the vietnam war with north vietnamese were Margie Torres marching towards saigon, president by that was a young senator trying to make his mark on the vietnam war. Trying to keep south vietnamese refugees out. Trying to stop the United States from trying to rescue our south vietnamese allies from the country as the north vietnamese marched south. One quote from him was something to the effect of we do not have a moral obligation to one or 100,000 south of it south vietnamese and i think that mentality, the disregard for our allies we fight with on the ground, i think it carried over to the way this war ended. I am not arguing here there is a good way to leave afghanistan but there are certainly less bad ways to do it and pretty much every decision that President Biden made in 2020 what made it worse than it had to be. One of those was art lack of a plan about how to get americans and afghan allies out if we are going to withdraw. Guest of all people am very sympathetic to the idea that afghanistan is in a lot of ways ungovernable and there is the poem about when the british were in there. And what they had to do with. I do see your point. I get it. I will point the purpose of the book was not to argue whether it should or should not have gotten out. It was to detail in a very factual basis everything that went wrong and how this could have been different. Because like it or not, there is no parallel, in modern American History, for thousands of americans to be abandoned to a foreign terrorist organization. Host do we know how Many American citizens are in afghanistan trying to get out now . Guest what i can tell you is that at the end of the withdrawal, the Biden Administration was trying to say that were just a few americans left behind, maybe a hundred or 200. Secretary blinken just this month came out and admitted since the end of the u. S. Presence in afghanistan, between 2021 and now close to 1000 americans had to be evacuated from afghanistan. It shows the number they were pushing, which by the way even if just a few americans are even just 100 americans were left behind, that wouldve been a dereliction of duty. Host how are they be evacuated now . Guest again, i will be careful about this to protect the individuals going about it. I can tell you primarily they are being evacuated by veteran groups and by private citizens who are still keeping that promise. We tell some of those stories in kabul. There are still americans that are actually held hostage by the taliban today. One it is not an american but an african ally and onestory i can share is that the interpreter who rescued President Biden or help rescue President Biden when his aircraft was forced down in afghanistan in 2007 was one of the afghans who was stranded. Host when he was a guest senator, at the time. He was on a congressional delegation at the time chuck hagel and i believe senator kerry. This afghan interpreter who helped rescue him was one of the ones who was left behind. He wrote a piece in the wall street journal on i believe the 30th when we left saying please do not abandon me. Divided made a big deal about we going to keep our the biden demonstration made a big deal about keeping our promise and getting him out. If you must later he was out of the country and Biden Administration took a lot of credit a few months later the Biden Administration took a lot of credit. We spoke with the people who got him and his family out. That was a private veterans group. The Biden Administration had no idea he was out of the country until he was at a seth safe house in pakistan. Host jan in illinois. Independent. Caller good morning. I want to reiterate what someone said before. I held back to the 60s in the vietnam war and i visually watch that evacuation. There were a lot of things that went wrong there. I appreciate the book has come out. I think it is a Lesson Learned book. I do not think we need to say whos fault it was because back in the 1960s, i think that was under president nixon. I do not know i think i would like to see in the future is a comparative history of a withdrawal from vietnam versus the withdrawal from afghanistan. Im not so worried about the withdrawal. I think it is been proven by russia and history of that country in general that that country wants to be what it is. If it wants to be a strict, muslim country, i do feel for all the women in afghanistan that are being put under so many pressures as far as no schooling and all of that, but i think i would like to see in five years as some want write historical, factual, comparative of withdrawal from vietnam versus the withdrawal from afghanistan. I think there are a lot of similarities. Host jerry, you talked about that. I want to ask you about from a political article about that hearing in front of the senate. Where secretary austin told senators while the pentagon plan to evacuate between 70000 and 80,000 people from the airport, American Forces were ultimately successful in transporting more than 124,000 people out of afghanistan. He said u. S. Military also evacuated more than 7000 People Per Day after initially planning to move between 5000 and 9000 People Per Day. He said at the height of the operation, and aircraft carrying evacuees was taking off every 45 minutes. He said it was the largest airlift conducted in u. S. History and it was executed in 17 days. Was a perfect . Of course not. What do you think of that . Should the administration get any credit for the scale of this evacuation . Guest the numbers are impressive, of course. Credit i think goes to the marines and other u. S. Troops and Service Members who were on the ground at kabul airport, performing heroically in an impossible situation that they have been put in. We were relying on the taliban to provide security outside that airport. Massive crowds, massive danger. The taliban sometimes turning americans away. Sometimes beating americans. The taliban and beating our afghan allies, turning them away, sometimes killing them in front of the marines who could see this happening. What the troops on the ground performed heroically and we got a lot of people out. When you dive into the numbers, the question is, who did we get out and who did we leave behind . Reality is we had made a lot of promises to the afghan allies that have served alongside us and we made promises to these american citizens in afghanistan that we would get them out and we did not. There were tens of thousands of afghan allies left behind. There are likely over a 1000 americans left behind. The numbers are impressive. Credit goes to these brave u. S. Service members who help make it happen. But at the end of the day, we did not fulfill the promises we made, the promises the Biden Administration continues to make even in august 2021 when they knew there want to break those promises. Guest one of the reasons for that extraordinary number of people that got out, i do think is praiseworthy, and asked jerry said, air force crews, the guys at the holding area assessing people, they did an incredible job. But there is this clear disparity between the number of people we got out and number of people we promise to get out who did not. One of the reasons for that was that on august 18, President Biden was frustrated with the slow pace of evacuations. He told the military to change the criteria from afghan allies and american citizens to any afghan they could be possibly considered what happened was we had tens of thousands of people admitted to the airfield over the next 12 hours. They are all trying to get on planes. There were riots on the field and they had to shut down evacuations for 36 hours while they tried to maintain that. They restarted evacuations late in the 21st. At that point, we still had not died any of the very few Americans Still had not gotten any of the very few americans we have promised to get out on the airfield. Military leaders said that decision set the stage for what happened on the 26 because we still had to so few numbers getting out that the white house was pressuring the military to keep the gate open even though there was a threat. Host in brunswick, new jersey. Independent. Good morning. Caller good morning. I heard quite a few points which bided demonstration did not highlight. I did not hear any comment from the authors agreement was signed sometime february 2020, the doha agreement, evacuation process was not planned, if it was not it was signed. On top of it, if Biden Administration was handcuffed with the agreement, why just the blame on the administration who have come in . There should be full blame shared and plant for demonstration who signed it shared on the demonstration who signed it. Where were they when all this planet was going on . Why the blame not being highlight it earlier someone mentioned about vietnam evacuation. Why is there no comparison on that . Guest the comments about the doha agreement, handcuffing President Biden, i understand where youre coming from with that, but i think we show in the book that is not the case. We have an entire chapter on the doha agreement and we make it clear we thought it was a flawed agreement. There were conditions in there. The taliban was not following through on anything it had a promise to do. The United States was under no obligation to withdrawal by a certain point when the taliban was violating every single piece of the doha agreement. I will point out that President Biden he chose when he was going to set the withdrawal date. He picked the 20th anniversary of the 9 11 attacks. This was a choice he made come september 11, 2021 and it was not a strategic decision. There is no strategy for picking the 20th anniversary of the horrible terrorist attack read but it was a particle one. I think he wanted some sort of political victory. The reality was he chose the middle of afghan fighting season for that withdrawal. He announced it in april and announced the conclusion of the withdrawal september and in that time period is when fighting it ramps up in afghanistan. Right as the fighting is ramping up and taliban is on the march is when we were pulling our troops out and our support for the Afghan Military. Because of that decision he made, which is not obligated to do, but made anyway, it meant by the 20th anniversary of 9 11, the taliban who had harbored al qaeda before 9 11 and continue to harbor them for 20 years, emmett the taliban it was back in charge of afghanistan again it meant the taliban it was back in charge of afghanistan again. Host frank, republican. Good morning. Caller good morning. I spent 22 years in the army. I spent four years in combat arms. I was in kuwait and i was in jordan at that time. At an airbase. Ill look up on the wall and saw a big map that said united airport road arab world. Now i am seeing getting involved in iraq. That is interesting. They have commandos in iraq right now. Trying to do what we try to do. The point is, we have never been we have police action, low intensity conflict. We tried to buy the piece. It had not worked. Nationbuilding has not worked. World war ii we do not have any problems firebombing every major city in germany, killing thousands of innocent women and children. War is nasty. It is 30. It is dirty. This is a difficult situation. Things are happening and if you look at the history of the immigrant party, the democrats, democrat has always been in office when weve been in a largescale conflict. Host reaction, james. Guest i think what i would say in response to that is that the underlying theme that nationbuilding is not an effective Foreign Policy strategy is 100 correct. I do not think jerry or i would ever argue to the contrary. Again i can tell you that firsthand. It leads me to something i want to emphasize which is that what we outline as jerry said at the beginning of the program is that if we want to outline all of the mistakes over 20 years made in afghanistan it would take us several thousand pages. We focus on this specific chapter because it was in that history. It is discrete. Because this is how it ended. Those were the decisions that were made and the consequences that happen. The one thing i would say is again, to reemphasize, whether you want to st oray whether you want to stay or get out, the point is theres never been a situation like this in American History and we lay out in clear details it did not have to happen. Host albert in chicago, democrat. Good morning. Caller good morning. I have two questions. No one has asked these questions and i would like your guest to answer both of them. Trump signed the doha agreement with the terrorist organization on february 29, 2020. Then from that day until he left office 11 months later to have everyone out of afghanistan who needed to be evacuated. It should never have been on bidens plate. My question, what was trump doing with the 11 months he had as to why he evacuated no one from afghanistan . My second question, in june 2020 after everybody saying trump changed his mind because the taliban was violating the agreement, in june 2020, he held a televised rally with cspan coverage where he said the only thing that was keeping the Afghan Government from collapsing was the presence of our troops. He took credit for the withdrawal as late as june 2020. Who did trump intend to take over afghanistan was he pulled our troops out in the Afghan Government collapse . In june he was still taking credit for it. Who did he intend to take over for afghanistan seeing she knew the government would collapse as he knew the government would collapse . Guest President Trump made it clear in 2020 he wanted to withdrawal u. S. Troops. Near the end of his presidency he even made significant moves to maybe withdrawal all u. S. Troops from the country but it is ultimately a decision he did not go through with. He ended up leaving the residual presence that was fluctuated between about 2500 and 35 hundred troops in the country. At the end of the day, i think President Trump was considering making the same mistake President Biden actually made, which was a rapid, total withdrawal of u. S. Troops that did not include a plan to keep the Afghan Military fighting, get american and afghan allies out. But President Trump did not do that. President biden came in. There was a troop presence about 2500 and it was President Biden who made the decision to pull the plug and rapidly pull all of our troops out without putting in place a plan about evacuated americans, as evacuated afghan allies, how to keep the African Military fighting. It was President Biden who Close Program airbase and left the u. S. That with our presence at an embassy in a small airport. We point out many mistakes that were made over many years, but how the withdrawal happened these are President Bidens decisions. Guest i do agree that a lot more should have been done in 2020. There is no way i would say that in terms of getting people out, the Biden Administration continued to tell the American People, including American People in afghanistan, that the government was not going to collapse. And it will happen because of that, even though military leaders told them otherwise about what happened because of that is when it collapse overnight there were thousands of americans who were all of a sudden stuck on the others the taliban, away from safety. Host that is james hasson, afghan war veteran, also Jerry Dunleavy house of Foreign Affairs Committee Staff and investigator. Coauthors of the book kabul. 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