allies, we ve given iran lunch in the region to become a national power and that s something that we ve already seen so, rick is absolutely right. we re going to be digging out of a mess. syria is a mess right now. general flynn is the kind of guy that stood up when things weren t going well with islamic state, with al qaeda, and he told the truth. telling the truth is absolutely important. identifying the enemy. he s done that over and over again. so, first identifying the enemy. and then crafting a policy that makes sure that the u.s. interest is first so when our soldiers, the best in the world, when our service members are out there, they know the cause, they know the purpose, they know the end state which is something we haven t seen over eight years. it s been longer than that. our soldiers are begging for leadership. and i think we re going to see that with general flynn. all right. i have to leave it there. jason beardsly and lieutenant colonel rick francona thanks to both of
and now we ve had to shift our focus from supporting the opposition to going after isis. and now, with the interference, and the intervention by the russians and the iranians and hezbollah and all the other forces you ve got a a really mixed playing field there. and that we haven t adapted our policy. the new administration is going to have to figure out just what our interests are in syria and act accordingly. if that is working with the russians against isis, that s going to take a major shift in our policy, and in effect we will be allied with bashar al assad. and i don t think we want to get into a situation where we re supporting a guy who bombs hospitals in the city of aleppo. so this is a real challenge for the new administration. and i get the impression, and i understand what jason is saying, we do have a government in power right now, but i think they re kicking the can down the road because syria just has no solution as far as this administration is concerned. all right.
to its credit is kind of stepping back from that policy a little bit, slowing down the pace of withdrawal. i d like to see both democrat and republican candidates for the presidency say, hey, we re not going to turn off the lights in afghanistan at the end of 2016 and put that in their platforms. we ve already run this videotape in iraq. it was a disaster. why would we do this again to ourselves when we can predict with some degree of fidelity what s actually going to happen if there s a total absence of american presence. we re not talking about sustaining a big troop presence, but some kind of presence that s not basically protecting our embassy in kabul is necessary. no question. these are easy issues to snipe from the outside, but they require decisions. big decisions coming forward. jason, peter, great to have you both on today. thank you. we want to take you now to capitol hill. that s where the senate has just voted on loretta lynch s
will allow other americans and ka canadians still being held in the area. otherwise, you re condemning them to certain death. we ve seen all the options. we ve seen the danger with all of them. here you have the possibility of collateral damage. you strike somewhere, you have no idea they were there, you kill an american and an italian. we had a rescue effort in yemen that killed a south african hostage. well the assault happened. he was killed by his hostage takers while that happened. you had a failed attempt for james foley and other hostages in syria. it s difficult to get right. jason, today the president took full responsibility for this even though he didn t order this particular strike. he apologized for it. how much of an intelligence failure is this or are these circumstances is there an element here that these circumstances of hostage taking are so difficult that mistakes happen when you re attempting to get these people free?
certainly a lot more to talk about. i want to bring in jason beardsly. also peter bergen cnn national security analyst. peter, if i could begin with you. we re hearing the family of warren weinstein expressing frustration today that the u.s. administration as well as the pakistani government did not do enough to win their husband s, their father s release. you ve written a piece now for cnn.com where you get into this and make the case that they re right, that no serious effort was made to negotiate for his release. what s behind that? i think for the u.s. government, you know the fact he was being held by al qaeda made it very problematic. the u.s. government position as you know is not to make concessions to terrorist groups al qaeda in particular. i ve talked to multiple pakistani officials about the circumstances of all this. they said they did make an effort to go house to house in north waziristan where warren weinstein was believed to be held and where he was almost