spine, at least for the time being, fighting off the taliban for the afghan security forces. now, that s all gob away. well, i think a small u.s. presence was sort of holding things together. obviously, and was keeping the jihads out of provincial capitals you have to remember the taliban and al-qaeda which has a bigger presence in afghanistan than u.s. officials been acknowledging for years were slowly making gains. rapidly making gains since last year. we saw this coming. the may 1st offensive that the taliban launched was a long time in the making. it was not something that happened overnight. they hollowed out the afghan security forces over the year preceding it. they killed thousands and thousands of afghans. for every american wondering tonight whether or not the afghans would fight for their country they failed but the truth is that thousands of them failed in the process. we should remember that and we should also remember that basically what you saw here was something where
did the taliban see an opening, say, ten years ago and they started to reorganize? i mean, how did the u.s. miss this? yeah, i want to be very clear. i know individuals within the u.s. intelligence and military establishment who saw this, but this is an overall failure in leadership both political, military and intelligence at the top levels. they thought that we didn t they never understood the enemy. they pretended that the taliban would disassociate with al qaeda. they thought that the taliban was a group that they could work with. so they ignored the taliban strategy, the taliban s objectives, and by 2018 general miller, who was the last commander of u.s. forces in afghanistan, nato as well, he said as the taliban was slowly seizing control of districts and implementing its insurgency strategy where it would take
that he thought he knew buetter than every one. do you think it was straight up greed or something else based on the fact you have overlapped and know more about this than most of us do? i ve got to stress that his military service was exemplary. he was a guy in our training class in the 1980s, you would picked out as that man will be a general. he s going be the general. by the time he got to iraq and afghanistan, mike flynn performed brilliantly. everybody made a fuss about dave petraeus and his bs counter insurgen insurgency strategy that didn t work anywhere. what mike flynn did saved a lot of american lives. he was courageous and challenging the old way of doing business in afghanistan. he gets points for that.
neck-in-neck with his top gop rivals. james carville and david are standing by. we ll talk about that. i m wolf blitzer and you re in the situation room. a new wave of fury may be about to explode in afghanistan after a u.s. soldier allegedly walked out of his base and went on a house to house shooting rampage. 16 civilians are dead, nine of them children. military authorities say the soldier acted alone and turned himself in. vowing revenge for the killings, a statement from the taliban calls u.s. forces and i m quoting, sick-minded american savages. u.s. officials are voicing deep sorrow. let me say that like many americans, i was shocked and saddened by the killings of innocent afghan villagers this weekend. we send our condolences to family who have lost their loved ones and to the people of afghanistan. this is not who we are. and the united states is committed to seeing that those responsible are held accountable. let s go straight to kabul with sara sidner stan
marine units deploys to afghanistan. we have lost, and this valley is a small bit of real estate, jeffrey, 6 miles long, half a mile wide. we have lost 40 troops there, marines and army soldier, sores scores more have been injured. so why give it up now, after almost ten years of fighting? well, i think that this is just part of a larger strategy of reorienting priorities, strategic priorities, to fit with the insurgency strategy that general mcchrystal has laid out. there really is no reason to have u.s. forces that are urgently needed in critical population centers to be operating in these remote stretches of terrain. they re not able to deny terrains to the insurgency. really, their role now is kind of serves as an aggravating factor to the local population. the thinking is we pull them out and i think the hope is that we see what we ve seen in other provinces nearby, is that when we leave, the