the most difficult military missions to execute. napoleon lost far more troops in his retreat from moscow than he lost in the invasion in russia in the first place. we are not used to this kind of action. we ve lost the memory of what happened in laos and cambodia and vietnam. you put it right. we have lost this war and what we re seeing is the end of 20 years of failed strategy, of failed military operations, of failed nation building, and yet the discussion in washington is exactly the opposite of what you described with henry kissinger. in washington we are focused on what s been going on for the last 20 days instead of looking at the last 20 years. this must not be the focus of our attention. there needs to be a reckoning of
this is a very dangerous moment in the foreign policy. we have to be honest about how we got here and not salvage past reputations and prestige. let s listen to the president reminding the white house press corps and the american people about why the military went into afghanistan 20 years ago. our interests in going was to prevent al qaeda from reemerging, first to get bin laden, wipe out al qaeda and afghanistan, prevent that from happening again. adam weinstein, you could think that s a statement of the obvious, but it actually isn t these days. that fact has gotten lost in so much of the discussion of what s been happening in this evacuation. well, i think washington engaged in so much gaslighting over the years that it actually began to believe its own message, which oftentimes was
the beginning, going in, getting osama bin laden, getting al qaeda, yes, check, we did that. but to stay and have a continuous occupation of this country to conduct a centralized government which they never had in their entire history, as the president pointed out, and all for what? for what purpose? to try to use military american power to shape the prospects of the middle east. this is what the president is taking issue with. in washington you see a determined cya operation going on in the washington establishment, a cover your butt operation, where all of those who have been responsible for the wars in the past 20 years are now on tv saying these wars were just and noble, that if we just listened to them, everything would work out okay, that we could keep 2,000 troops in afghanistan indefinitely, and oh, by the way, we re being stabbed in the back by joe biden
of that, should give us all pause as americans and give us a little bit of humility to recognize that our military and our political system and the constant change in foreign policy that happens from administration to administration is not able to intervene in countries abroad and remake those societies. it s simply a crazy proposition. and i know that when you talk to the average american outside of washington, d.c. and you ask them, do you think it s normal to stay in a country militarily for 20 years, the answer is almost always no. adam weinstein, timothy kudo, joe cirincione, thank you all very much for joining us on this important night. thank you. coming up, at this very hour tonight, the texas state house is debating the latest edition of the republican bill that restricts voters rights in that state. the texas congressman and former
of course, no republican senators called on ronald reagan to resign when that happened in beirut to the 220 marines, 241 military personnel. and so we are in a zone here where we were not going to be getting through this together, we re going to be getting through this in a contentious way with republicans trying to make the most of it. that is one of the saddest things about this, a time when we should be mourning together, we should be expressing our sympathies together. you see this caught up in the maw of this disinformation partisan hyper-attack mode that is washington these days, and it s used to call for resignations, as h.r. mcmaster did, to say this is just a matter of political will and to imply that joe biden doesn t have the manliness to go after them and spread the kind of disinformation he s been spreading all over the airwaves