gar after defending his decision to stick with the trump administration taliban agreement, as well as some of the chaos resulting from the withdrawal. the only rational thing to do in my view was to set up and pre-position american forces for the purpose of evacuation. if we had decided 15 years ago to leave afghanistan, it would have been really difficult. if we decided five years ago, if we continued the war for another decade and tried to leave, there s no way in which we would be able to leave afghanistan without there being some of what you re seeing now. joining me now, ronald newman who served as u.s. ambassador to afghanistan from 2005 to 2007. mr. ambassador, thank you for joining me, sir. you know this territory very well. is president biden right on
past o missions. so negotiations with the taliban on the ground may well be necessary, and exactly what has to be offered, if anything because i don t know whether they really want to keep all of these people. but that s something you re going to have to look at in detail on the ground, not in talking heads on washington programs, with all due respect. yeah. all right, former u.s. ambassador to afghanistan, ronald newman, thank you, mr. ambassador. appreciate your time. republicans are twisting and turning to distance themselves from the deal that president trump struck with the taliban. the gop about-face is next. 55, 39, 71, and 43 we won! yes! noooo. noooo. noooo. quick, the quicker picker upper! bounty picks up messes quicker and each sheet is 2x more absorbent, so you can use less.
i heard the 4500 number the ambassador spoke to. when the real discussions earlier this year were taking place on maintaining troop presence or complete withdrawal, the number i kept hearing was 2500. they could maintain with a relatively small footprint, shore up the afghan government and support the military in a way that prevents taliban from full scale takeover. the people that were against that argued there was already agreement in place with the taliban in february of 2020 that the u.s., there would be full withdrawal. the reason the taliban hadn t been attacking americans and nato allies in the year plus since the agreement was because of agreement they were adhering to one piece of it, wanted the u.s. to get out. if the u.s. decided to stay, the taliban would start attacking. we don t know. nobody knows what the taliban would have done had the u.s. decided to stay. across the board, i heard
defense officials wanted to maintain a presence there. the ambassador makes an excellent point about one of the main reasons for doing that, that was to maintain morale among the afghan government and the afghan military, they would know they have the u.s. and nato allies behind them when they were fighting the taliban and al qaeda and isis presence there. i was also in afghanistan about a month ago. while i was there, i spoke with several of these leaders, the national security adviser under president ghani. they said they believe if the u.s. maintained a presence there, they would have continued this stalemate with the taliban. they could have continued some sort of talks going on in doha and they would be able to keep the taliban out. according to now former afghan government officials, they believed the same thing, aaron. peter baker, obviously the president has been steadfast saying he doesn t regret his decision to withdraw from
been very different from the way it played out and the way the president now admits he thought it would play out all along which is with chaos. ambassador newman, what s your reaction to what s unfolding, the scramble to get folks out of the u.s. government entity in afghanistan, to get that group out and chaos we see around the airport and on the streets and the fact that the president is saying there s no way to avoid that. well, that s a misstatement to be polite. the decision to leave is one thing. the execution of that decision has been absolutely abomb inable. it has been rushed. it caused part of the panic, it has added to it. the business of taking out interpreters, special immigrant visa people was kept on slow walk for several months after the withdrawal decision.