most everything else, president biden also wanted out of afghanistan. he deposed the troop surge while vice president, and he didn t change a word of trump s deal with the taliban. all he did was push back the date for all u.s. troops to leave from may to august 31st. war in afghanistan was never meant to be a multigenerational undertaking. we were attacked. we went to war with clear goals. we achieved those objectives. bin laden is dead, and al qaeda is degraded in iraq and afghanistan. and it s time to end the forever war. with the deadline looming in kabul, afghans knew they were now in serious danger. especially the hundreds of thousands who had worked for the americans. hiding above a restaurant, a met
. the war in afghanistan was, at first, a big success. the united states avenged september 11, and even though bin laden escaped, he was on the run, and al qaeda s protectors, the taliban, were overthrown. afghans were grateful their country was no longer occupied by religious fanatics. the afghan people were turning to the international community. within a month and a half, the people of afghanistan were freed from a creeping extremism, and then we began to flourish. hamid was the darling of the west, he was called the chiccest man on the planet. helped by the cia, karzai rode into afghanistan on the back of
incident as an excuse for war. we still don t believe that was true. the united states went into afghanistan 9/11, toppled the taliban, drove out al qaeda, and won the war in three months. only to lose it over the next 20 years. the united states spent $2 trillion, sacrificed 2,461 american lives, and gave an entire generation of afghans a taste of freedom that didn t last. after the taliban takeover at kabul s bakhtar university, women returned to class, but only a few dared to show up. this woman studied international relations and hoped to become an ambassador. but their dream deferred, had dried up like a raisin in the sun. we had a lot of achievement,
taliban and had al qaeda on the run. it took 100 cia operatives and 300 special forces soldiers. only one cia officer was killed. as wars go, it was short, cheap, effective and victorious. but it wasn t a total victory. there was one major shortcoming that proved critical. bin laden and a few hundred al qaeda militants slipped away, even though the cia had them trapped along the mountainous border with pakistan in an area called tora bora. they were driven from power, from all the urban centers, and tora bora was their last redoubt. he direct the cia response from washington. he passed on repeated requests from his team on the ground for reenforcements, about a thousand troops, to finish off bin laden.
a group of afghan translators who worked for u.s. forces. they were begging to get out and complaining no one was listening. we pretty much feel abandoned. the taliban will kill us. maybe the al qaeda will kill us. we are not secure. this is a the time for the government to deliver what they have promised and especially to the local afghan interpreters. do you think i don t want to ask such a crude question. do you think the people in this room, do you think you re going survive? if i came back in a year or two, do you think i m going to find all you have here? no. not possible. it s not clear. whether we re going to be dead. reporter: this was back in may 2021, three months before biden s withdrawal deadline, a time when thousands of american troops were still in the country and the taliban were still far away from kabul. yet little was being done to get