of 39, after being diagnosed with breast cancer last year. in afghanistan. the leader of the resistance group fighting the taliban, says he s willing to enter peace talks. relatives of a female police officer in the ghor province of afghanistan have told the bbc that she has been killed by the taliban. the un condemns a military coup in guinea after soldiers appear on television to say they ve ousted president alpha conde. the head of one of prince charles charities temporarily steps down after claims he helped secure an honourfor a major donor. now on bbc news. hardtalk. stephen sackur speaks to veteran us senator lindsey graham, one of the republican party s most outspoken voices on foreign policy. welcome to hardtalk. i m stephen sackur.
on the afghan people that i think is going to make us all sick to our stomach. but most importantly, they re going to give safe haven to al-qaeda, who has ambitions to drive us out of the mideast writ large and attack us because of our way of life. we will be going back into afghanistan as we went back into iraq and syria. to the. hang on. you seriously think the united states will, once again. we ll have to. ..in the foreseeable future. yes. ..put troops back into afghanistan? we ll have to. we ll have to, because the threat will go so.will be so large. why did we go back to syria and iraq? why do we have 5,000 troops in iraq today? because of the caliphate rising, projecting force outside of iraq, killing americans, killing the french, attacking the british. so, yes, it will be a cauldron for radical islamic behaviour. you cannot deal with this over the horizon. here s my solution. help the resistance in the panjshir valley. the taliban will not be able to govern afghanistan. they re
and made it as strong as it has been since ronald reagan. we can argue about. let s be honest. donald trump was the america first president. donald trump planted the seeds of isolationism that we see today in your country. well, i would say, let s judge him on based. ..based on what he did. he destroyed the caliphate. 0k, it rose on 0bama and biden s watch and trump sent the military in to destroy it. when he left, there were 2,500 us soldiers on the ground with nato allies. they re no longer there. he killed soleimani, which i think was a good thing. he rebuilt the military in a fashion where we can be effective all over the globe. the deterioration in the military during the 0bama years was real. so here s my point. whether you like trump or not, whether you believe it s trump s fault or biden s fault, here s where we re at as a world the taliban are not reformed, they re not new. they have a view of the world out of sync with modern times. they re going to impose a lifestyle
message, which is dumb as dirt. and let me tell you why i think joe biden has been wrong for almost 20 years on this stuff. joe biden doesn t see the existential threat from afghanistan to the american homeland. how did we get attacked 20 years ago, septemberiith? the taliban gave al-qaeda safe haven to plan and plot against america. the soldiers that were there, the british soldiers, the nato forces, the american forces were there to give capability to the afghan military so the taliban wouldn t take over the country to give safe haven to radical islamic groups who would attack us. when the caliphate was formed in syria and iraq, 20 countries got hit, 2,000 people got killed because we pulled out of iraq. so here s what i ve been trying to tell the american people. a residual counterterrorism force made up of nato members and us special forces is an insurance policy against another 9/11. president biden is trying to tell
is you re going to see the resistance rise. isis will come after the taliban large and the entire country is going to fracture in the next year, creating a perfect storm for western interests to be attacked. you can do one of two things. you can say that s no longer my problem. let it build and get hit or hit them before they hit you. if i may, i now want to talk a little bit less about geopolitics, a bit more about personal politics. yourjourney to many people, both in the united states and around the world, it s pretty inexplicable. you were the great friend and ally ofjohn mccain. you and he, and i ve interviewed you about this in the past, you and he were the great advocates of using america s military might overseas. you believed in interventionism to defend values. right. ..to project america s power. and then in 2016, you jumped horses, you backed donald trump as i said, the america first president many see