we signed a surrender agreement to the taliban. you re talking about mike pompeo? yes. this collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. the taliban didn t defeat us. we defeated ourselves. joining me now, political strategist and biden campaign consultant and a lease jordan, msnbc political analyst. she also worked at headquarters for the nato led mission in kabul. as i welcome you both, elise, you spent time in kabul. was this deal a surrender? do you see an alternative to what went down? surely it was a weak deal. we had no room to negotiate, we had no leverage, because donald trump made it very clear that he wanted to get completely out and he would rush it along by making declarations that he wanted it pushed along even further and that will weaken the deal even more. but biden didn t necessarily have to accept the contours of
install a stable government that represented the people in afghanistan so we would not confront this situation today. and then, of course, last year president trump made a decision to meet secretly with the taliban. he trusted the taliban, which is something you can never do, and announced our withdraw by may of last year. that set in course what happened these past couple of weeks. so i think mistakes have been made, but we re going to have a chance to review that and make sure we don t repeat these mistakes in the future. but let me, again, be clear, our mission today is to save lives and we have to get people out of afghanistan. first americans and then those who helped us. sir, if public sentiment is one of getting americans out of afghanistan overwhelmingly so, when all is said and done, will this be perceived as a mistake? i think the way afghanistan was handled, there were a lot of mistakes made. we needed to go into afghanistan
we still don t know how the communications are being done with americans or those who helped us as to when they should go to the airport, how they can get to the airport, how they ll be able to board planes. it s rather chaotic and we just don t have good information as to how safe it is for individuals to be able to get to the airport, and then through the gate itself. so there s still a very critical situation. our mission right now is to save as many people as we possibly can, highest priority, u.s. citizens, then those who helped us directly in our mission, and then those who are at risk, such as leaders in the community that were supporting our mission in afghanistan. senator it s a very fluid situation and dangerous situation. sir, as you ve been watching all of this play out, when you look at it, is there anything in your mind that you think could have been done differently to avoid some of the pitfalls that we are currently facing? well, alex, clearly this should we