allow to get to bagram when many of the civilians were in kabul already. he explained the logistical reason that bagram did not make sense to keep open. so, the totality of what we learned certainly from yesterday and today seems to be the military leadership both civilian and active duty seems to have made it clear, look, this was on the white house. they made this decision. we carried out the order. we may have advised something else but it does feel as if they re making it clear this isn t on us. is that how you look at it? yes. but, i mean, also making it very clear that this was the president s decision because he s the commander in chief and there s civilian in control of the military. the one thing lost in a lot of this, it is very uncommon for us to hear from a general officer like general milley and
of how difficult afghanistan is to begin with. and we shouldn t lose track of that. we were trying to do a very difficult thing. one point that i think is important, we went into afghanistan to make sure that al qaeda didn t hit us again. and i know people are saying, was it worth it? i think it was, because, you know, osama bin laden did not hit us again. we did not have another terrorist attack. but then once we got there, once we took out al qaeda, once we drove them out of the country, the question was, if we just leave now, won t they skrust come right just come right back? it made sense to put a government in place to make sure they don t just come right back. back to 2004, 2005, had we just pulled out, people would be saying that was stupid. what we discovered from 2005 forward was the difficulty of getting a stable gst and stable afghan national security force in place was far higher than we
seen intelligence officials on the record or background coming out and saying, no, no, this isn t on us. military officials saying nothing had predicted this quick collapse. so, what are you learning from your perch about what we, as a government, knew and who knew it when? reporter: well, i think that we re learning that the biden administration really didn t see this coming at all. as i reported earlier in the week, military and intelligence officials had warned that kabul could collapse in weeks to months after the american withdrawal. that s after august 31st. but, of course, no one really realized that the taliban would seize power mostly bloodlessly in a matter of days. they essentially walked into kabul and seized the presidential palace. time and time again it seems that american officials overestimated the will and capacity of afghan security forces and underestimated the effectiveness of the taliban s strategy. it s interesting to see what the taliban have done here,
african-american youth aren t shooting up malls of people, hispanics aren t shooting up malls of people, so i think if we do this, which we have the right to say we should, i don t think this is going to stop these young white men, joy, from maybe grabbing their father s pistol to continue this style of hate with another weapon. i really think white americans this isn t on us, i would argue really need to do something and speak directly to the issues that are impacting their youth, as they would say if it was on our shoes. oh, those black people, they need to do something about except that when the mob was using tommy guns to mow people down, there were public massacres on a regular basis, the response of the federal government, including fdr, was to ban those oozies and tommy guns. you cannot have them, they are illegal. it s been done before, and you know what? the mob wasn t able to do that. most republican voters, but not the friends. beto is right about that. they said,
how is this on us? this is not on montgomery county anyway shape or form. we have a police chief who is dedicated to public safety and we are following the rules and recommendations he has set. this is not on us. eric: all right, kimberly, is it in fact on rockville, maryland or the border patrol in texas? kimberly: this is a perfect example where you have this problem where they are finger-pointing this way but public safety loses out and a young girl like this 14-year-old girl becomes a victim of bureaucracy that isn t working properly. channels not communicating. everybody has to uphold the law on their end for the system to work. when you have one component of it not doing that, that s when it falls apart, like you see in sanctuary cities. i understand what they are saying. they did their job, this isn t on us. our police chief is all about law and order and wanting to uphold the rules and laws but