for americans and other individuals that want to be able to leave afghanistan after our withdrawal is complete that the state department is going to continue to work across many different levers to facilitate that transportation. i say, as i said earlier, right now, we do not anticipate a military role in that effort. the panel is here. john, doing a little leg work. michael beschloss joins us, we are waiting comments from the secretary of state. for viewers wondering, the foggy bottom seems to be running behind schedule, although it is a busy day. we re going to bring you secretary of state blinken s comments when he comes out to the lectern you see. i will go to john and then michael. john, we talked about policy and big picture history. walk us through from military
president obama who adopted the surge policy in iraq into afghanistan, and you saw this pile on of progressives maybe being too quiet, democratic foreign policy people tied to the surge in afghanistan, republicans took advantages of biden, retired generals that own the surge wanting to pass the buck to joe biden and the truth is general petraeus will have a lot more to do and look like general westmoreland than general eisenhower. it is about time we reflect on people that got us to this point, not the individual that had the single individual courage to end the bad policy and level with the american public. this is the single greatest piece of leadership we have seen since the death of bin laden in the last ten years of the war when the public and news media wasn t really paying attention to them. katrina, speak to that you were making, the policy and how long it was to get out and sort of the remainders.
report. those in power who are now trying to blame joe biden for the way he is ending a war which is always harder than entering a war need to be held to account. and too often those that got it wrong are given the air time to talk to the american people and blame president biden. in any case, i think let s hope we have a foreign policy of restraint and diplomacy and less of military interventionism and try um falism. i love my country but i don t think it is the indispensable nation. it needs to work with many countries to do things that would improve this world. john, go ahead. yeah, no. listen, proem, i mean, there was a war inside the white house in 2009 between the biden folks that wanted a direct anti-terror policy and frankly folks with
korea, americans wanted to forget about the trauma of vietnam and the result is that there were certain mistakes we did not learn from, some of which led to the war in afghanistan, some of the problems we are dealing with today. therefore, i think the lesson from all of that is much better to have a president like joe biden say we made this day. this is not a great victory for american foreign policy and american policy, but let us never forget what happened even if it is painful. to that end, michael, what is the secretary of state supposed to convey tonight other than formally marking it is over. to your point on facing history more accurately in real time, what do you think is worth saying to the public? well, he s going to have to first say as he should that americans, not only military heroes, risked their lives, gave
blinken is prepared to come out to the lectern at the state department for a speech billed this hour. we will bring it to you live. we are also hearing new in the last few moments in the white house that president biden intends to address the nation on all of this tomorrow. i am joined by howard dean, former dnc chairman and vermont governor, presidential candidate ran against hawkish u.s. policy. publisher of the nation magazine, and john stolls. chairman and co-founder of vote vets. i can start anywhere, john. start with you. what does it mean to see this formally end today? i think it is reflection point. certainly has been a long 18 days, been a long 20 years. i think this is one of the few weeks where i can say going back to when i first went to iraq in 2003 that the entire nation it