install a stable government that represented the people in afghanistan so we would not confront this situation today. and then, of course, last year president trump made a decision to meet secretly with the taliban. he trusted the taliban, which is something you can never do, and announced our withdraw by may of last year. that set in course what happened these past couple of weeks. so i think mistakes have been made, but we're going to have a chance to review that and make sure we don't repeat these mistakes in the future. but let me, again, be clear, our mission today is to save lives and we have to get people out of afghanistan. first americans and then those who helped us. >> sir, if public sentiment is one of getting americans out of afghanistan overwhelmingly so, when all is said and done, will this be perceived as a mistake? >> i think the way afghanistan was handled, there were a lot of mistakes made. we needed to go into afghanistan