in six months this will be taliban 1.0 pre-2001. you say they convinced these governments and the military to melt away, honestly the taliban was able to take over this country so quickly, largely because the afghan military didn t fight and the political structure, the governmental structure, just quit. just folded shop and left. there is an argument that some are making that that just proves that it wasn t worth the u.s. effort the blood and treasure to prop it up if it was able to fold so quickly. how do you respond to that? two things i think we could have left in a less expeditious manner. we could have had the over the horizon forces in place to give backbone to the tragic forces on the ground. we could have left a small contingent of americans in there to continue to fight with them and provide advice. but at the end of the day, john, it s very simple. for all the money we spent, for
2001 afghanistan. the president dealt himself out of these negotiations effectively. afghan government will now have to stand alone. the remaining question is how big a military footprint will be keep in afghanistan? imagine we keep some footprint but not enough to effective military control over these outlying provinces even if you do have a beginner footprint to support the afghan government inside of kabul. it s an ugly set of choices now. arthel: couple questions for you. how much do you think or how many troops should be left there? remind us what the pre- 2001 conditions were? pre- 2001 was when the taliban was in control of afghanistan. al qaeda was running loose. terrible place for women and just and approaches oppressive awful place. in terms of the footprint a lot of people talk about the number of troops for the way you look at it is what types of capabilities do we want to have their and the troops that follow that. will be have special forces advisors and trainers or wil