take responsibility. it was my fault. let me break down let me bring douglas in on that point. i want to hold your thought. i want to hear about the context lizing of the history of this because that comparison you draw and responsibility we ve heard president biden talk about the buck stopping there, douglas, four presidents have presided over america s longest war. as i mentioned, president biden was the first now to actually end it. it s all significant as i mentioned. he s the only commander in chief out of the four who has had a child serve here and as douglas stated to your point, david, this is not necessarily about the personal family of joe biden. speak to the significance of this moment now. give us the idea of what the legacy of this might actually mean given what david has just spoken about. you know, with george w. bush used to say i m the decider and he operated with a certainty and the buck stops here attitude. harry truman was a great hero to george w. bush. the p
commander in chief. but i wonder why hadn t we seen president biden s trademark empathy until today? what do you think of this shift? i approve of the shift and agree with david. i thought president biden did a better job today communicating emotion and concern. i think he s doubling down as we everybody in america is in agreement we must bring the americans back but talking about bringing on the afghan visa applicants, people that have helped us in the 20-year war back in i think ramped up way. but early in the week, this was a disaster. this is the biden boondoggle. it was america with no strategy whatsoever. everything seems to be helter-skelter and hurley burley. we re witnessing one of the most momentous airlifts in world history going on and we can only pray that it s going to, you know, bring people back but the divide in the country is, you know, i think donald trump is getting off very easily for four years, he tried to disassociate
treated at a hospital and returned to the father but we don t know if they were able to leave. the pentagon releasing photos tonight of troops sharing water with an afghan boy. fist bumping another boy. and holding a baby. i want to bring in cnn senior political analyst david gurgin. glad to have you both. under these circumstances there is a lot to talk about. david, when you see all the chaos and all the desperation, literally thousands of people trying to get through dangerous check points on to planes, how do you think that the president is handling this crisis? well, i must say, laura that i think you got better this week on the last day. a statement i thought was more confident and more confident i
cnn s team and root from kabul to qatar with a crowd of some 400 afghan nationals desperate to flee afghanistan. but, the journey began at the airport in kabul where as david was mentioning, clarissa ward filed this report. reporter: after three weeks in afghanistan, we joined the crowds at kabul airport, now the only way out of the country. there is a huge block here. lots of cars. hundreds of people wait in the blistering heat hoping for a flight out. so we just managed to get into the airport compound and i have to say, it was pretty intense. just like this crush of desperate people and screaming children and women and babies and, yeah, it s not every day you see desperation like that.
highest standards under difficult dynamic circumstances. our nato allies are strongly standing with us. their troops keeping entered alongside ours in kabul as is the case whenever i deploy our troops into arm s way, i take that responsibility seriously. i carry that burden every day. just as i did when i was vice president and my son was deployed to iraq for a year. i mean, the president is talking about his late son beau. how important is it right now that he is reminding people that when he makes these sorts of decisions, they re not made with the lack of awareness of what it means for our troops. i mean, really four presidents presided at this point and he s the only one to have had somebody who was a child who actually served in the military. what do you make of that, david? well, listen, i think it genuinely would make it very much grief about his son.