i would add to this too, this is an interconnected world. you can see with the chinese are doing. you can see how the russians are responding, and we have an open southern border today. the terror brisket, as we begin to see people flee afghanistan, while we have an open southern border, while our law enforcement is being weakened by the fact that we have defunded the police. these are not separate issues. these were all part of the trump administration s understanding of how we keep america safe and free. the biden administration simply refuses to do that, to use the strength of american power to deter war. sandra: real quick, last final question there. do you believe any military leaders that helped carry out the president s orders here, do you believe anybody should be stepping down and resenting based on this? so, there s a time to make that evaluation. it is not today, sandra. i always remember my basic rules from when i was a cadet at west point. we had an obligation to execu
commitment that we made more than a decade ago. in the last thing that i would say is that president biden is laser focused on accomplishing the core national security objectives of the united states. and when it comes to afghanistan, that was getting bin laden, destroying al qaeda. he believes that it was time for our troops to come home. you described a kind of choice that the president either save the folks, the allies in afghanistan, the folks that helped the united states for two decades, or sacrifice more americans. i think the question out there on capitol hill and around washington and elsewhere, wasn t there another choice? wasn t there a way he could have ended president biden could have ended the war the way that he wanted to so that americans don t sacrifice for their lives for this war, but at the same
impacts of 20 years of decisions that have piled up, you have to make a lot of heart calls, knowing that none have clean outcomes. what you can do is plan for all contingencies. we did that. the american forces now on the ground at hkia are there because of contingency planning and drilling we did over the course of months, preparing for a range of scenarios, including dire scenarios. president biden ordered multiple battalions to be prepositioned, and activated them for deployment before the fall of kabul. he also put them on a short string here in the united states. those have now flowed in as well. yes, there were chaotic scenes yesterday, but as admiral kirby said, even these plans do not survive first contact with reality, and they require adjustments. we have made those adjustments. we will stay in close touch with our allies and partners in the days ahead as we contend with the immediate need to complete
become a safe haven for terrorists. i know you and the president have disputed that. what do you think those officials are getting wrong, and can you ensure that americans are safer to that because of your actions than we were several months ago? jake: i want to be very clear about our position. we will have to deal with the potential threat of terrorism from afghanistan moving forward, just as we have to deal with the potential threats of terrorism in dozens of countries and multiple continents around the world. we have to deal with the threat of terrorism in yemen and somalia and syria. we have to deal with the threat of terrorism across we have to do so using a wide variety of tools and intelligence capabilities, and yes, in some cases, the support we can provide to local partners to help them deal with the challenge. and what we have shown is in many of the cases i just mentioned, among others, we have been successful to date and
remarks, we do not anticipate that it would happen at that speed. we were planning for these potential contingencies. the reason i say that at the outset that we knew it was possible they could take over, and that had to be built in to our calculus and making that determination is the president did to drive down our forces, because once the taliban came into kabul, we were going to be faced with a situation, no matter if there were still u.s. troops on the ground or no u.s. troops on the ground, dealing with a significant number of people wanting to try to get evacuated. i will give you an example. we continued to communicate with american citizens for weeks, telling them to get out of the country. we offered financial assistance for those who would not be able to afford to get on flights themselves. many chose to stay right until the end, and i was their choice. we now are faced with a circumstance where we have to help evacuate them. that is our responsibility as the u.s. government,