we have to have these discussions. the lives of american soldiers, even if it s just a dozen, it s not a goddamn rounding error. these are lives. so anyone who truly respects the military should absolutely be calling for a congressional hearing. it means you re absolutely questioning the generals. so that we don t replicate what we did in this war for the next one. this is going in the right direction. during the final weeks of america s withdrawal, back in washington, i met with almost all of the war s chief architects. the commanders of the war in afghanistan. for some tough questions and painful reflections on what went wrong, on what they could have done differently. and the lessons we must all learn from this 20-year war. what does it feel like you to when you hear about the withdrawal of u.s. service
people that live in that country. they ve been at war in some form for the last 45 years. they re a good people. i want them to have a better future. i m also invested in the thousands of americans that have served over there and have done i think an extraordinary job. so i m very, very worried about what i see. i think we didn t really know what winning was going to be from the start. eight years into the war general stanley mckrystal took the reins in afghanistan. his success hunting terrorists in iraq and transforming jsoc led newly elected president obama to believe that mcclift ll would be the one to deliver his campaign promise of righting the ship in afghanistan. sources say u.s. president joe biden will announce a withdrawal of u.s. troops from
afghanistan. i didn t see a point where we would have sustainable afghan forces, a thriving democracy and a thriving economy in afghanistan. i viewed our presence in afghanistan as a term insurance policy. when you stop paying the premium, you stop mitigating the risk of bad things happening. beyond the general s worries for the future came some sobering admissions as to how 20 years of war and the most powerful military in the world could have failed to prevent the taliban from recapturing kabul with hardly a shot fired. i have a real sense of tragedy for the afghan people. i think the taliban regime will be hard on so many afghans. so that hurts. the other emotion on our effort is that in my entire experience i never saw people there trying to screw it up. five to seven-round bursts. i saw good people with good
otherwise, all you re doing is setting the stage for either going back to as bad as it was before or even worse. afghanistan was the war that there was worldwide support for. there was good will for it in a way. nato invoked the article so that all members were behind to help the united states for the first and only time in history. the council agreed that an armed attack against one or more of the allies in europe or in north america shall be considered an attack against them all. what could have been done differently with the benefit of 20 years of experience? sure. i ve thought about it a lot. right after the 9/11 attacks i would have made a decision inside the u.s. government to do nothing substantive for a year. what i mean by nothing, no bombing, no strikes, et cetera. i would have gone around the world as the aggrieved party and
senior intelligence analyst was at that dinner. and the intelligence analyst said to the senators, senators, you know we ve won this war twice already. we won it the first time at the end of the campaign in the fall of 2001. he said we won it a second time in 2004. it happened to be during my era. when the afghans elected their first president. a government based on the constitution of afghanistan. and in respect of the constitution of afghanistan. outside of the military offensive there were some early successes in afghanistan trying to rebuild the country devastated by decades of war. including the first direct democratic election in the country s history. i am very, very happy because now i m sure we will have a good government and a future and now i can make my future, i can make my life by myself. all those people holding up their finger, showing the dye, showing that they had voted.