the end when he said the argument for staying in afghanistan is being made by people sitting quite comfortably and saying we can do this in a low-grade or low-cost or low-risk way. and he felt very strongly that he wanted to communicate to the american people that there is nothing low-grade or low-cost or low-risk about war. and certainly not about this 20-year war in afghanistan that has caused so much death, wounded so many people, and left so many people with invisible injuries and so many families suffering. so, that s what he wanted to communicate today. i think it was a speech that really reflected joe biden s heart, and a speech that he feels was the ultimate delivery on a commitment he made to the american people to end this war. we had former bush and obama war czar doug lute on before. and he was talking about how this is a position that then vice president, now president biden has had for more than a
demographics, about the geography, about the neighborhood, about the political culture in afghanistan. things that should ve been instrumental in forming policy. and so i learned myself much over that ten-year period, and yet many of our decisionmakers to include many of our senior military officers, our diplomats and so forth, didn t have ten years of steady attention, steady focus on this problem. so, there s another famous quote, not mine, that we weren t there for 20 years, we were there for one year for 20 years. 20 one-year wars. our fundamental understanding of afghanistan was often at the 101 college level, and we needed masters degrees. kaitlan collins, while we re waiting for jen psaki to come out, president biden has been putting part of the blame for the withdrawal on president trump and the deal that the trump administration cut with the taliban for withdrawal may
decade wanting to end the u.s. involvement in the war in afghanistan. the war is over, but of course involvement with afghanistan s not over because as president biden just acknowledged, there are up to 200 american citizens who want to leave afghanistan and didn t make it out before the deadline. i ve been told some u.s. citizens who showed up to the airport before the deadline were left standing outside the gates. they were unable to get in. how are you going to get those americans out? and what was the reason that some citizens could not get in? was it entirely because of terrorist threats to hamid karzai international airport? well, jake, i think it s really important to answer your question. to start with the fact that we gave 19 messages starting in march to americans to leave the country. we offered them financial assistance to leave the country. and then for more than two weeks we gave them specific instructions for how to come. 97% of the people we communicated with got to t
the perspective of the afghan people, it was hard not to find that, you know, occasionally a little hard to listen to because there wasn t any recognition really of the suffering of the afghan people. there wasn t any recognition of the absolute desperation of the feeling of abandonment. there was of course a very strong case put forward about why the u.s. had to leave. and, in my experience in afghanistan these last months, most afghan people understand that. but there was so little sense of humility about the fact that the u.s. invaded this country 20 years ago and the toll that has taken and the lives that have been lost not just on the u.s. side but also on the afghan side. and i do think you will see some frustration from people in afghanistan that there wasn t more maybe humility in terms of the tone to the afghan people. something to the effect of i m sorry we couldn t help you all
and that is the message really the one that got through the most, the only one when it came to the people of afghanistan. ambassador loot is with me in studio. and retired general loot, let me ask you, first of all, a big question, a big-picture question. i know you don t like the term, but you were bushes, afghanistan war czar and then obama s afghanistan war czar on afghanistan. ultimately, you think that president biden made the right decision in ending the u.s. involvement in this engagement. jake, i agree with the president s decision. i think he actually outlined the two cornerstones of his decision in his remarks just now. first of all, the laser-like focus on al qaeda, which is the cause that took us there in 2001 and the weeks just after 9/11. he outlined the effects we ve had against al qaeda, especially the al qaeda that could reach us