Resulting from the carnage of our hasty exit. decisions have to be made about the scope of our operation, who to save and what to do with the myriad of weapons we left behind. and how to ensure we never repeat the many mistakes that are part of our legacy in afghanistan. joining me now is michael o hanlon. he s also the author of several books most recently the art of war in an age of piece u.s. grant strategy and resolute restraint. michael you motivated today s opening commentary. what do you want to add to it? well, michael, thank you, thanks to all of our men and women in uniform, as well as our diplomats, aid workers, ngo workers, a lot of those very brave in afghanistan. as you said, they accomplished a lot. they kept us safe for 20 years. the point i would make, on september 12th, 2001, the day
Predicted on september 12th, 2001. let s talk about the events in afghanistan. here s the screen. i ll share it with you first, was the situation in afghanistan inevitable or the result of policymaking mistakes? you say what? i think it was largely as a result of mistakes. but i don t think we know what would have happened if we played this out five or ten more years. when president biden says, for example it would have been the same regardless of when we left. he might right. he might wrong. a lot of things can change with the afghan government. it s true they were not making positive necessary progress while we were there but also true they were decimated by human war and they need lucky breaks. so we don t know what lucky breaks might have happened if we stayed on longer. i think in addition to the mistakes made before president biden pulling the plug was a
September 12th, 2001 while i was in the cia working to be involved in the supporting invasion of afghanistan, that we would still be in the war 18 years later i would say that is hard to believe but if you told me it is 18 more years before another major attack on our h e homeland and i would have says you are crazy and we haven t seen that because of the men and women in our intelligence services and diplomatic corp and military are still operating as if it is september 12th. so we don t want to see al qaeda come back or see isis or continue to matt aft size and we have to keep the pressure on them. good point. congressman will hurd, thank you so much for joining us. wolf, always a pleasure, my friend. we have a lot to discuss. our political experts are standing by. we ll have that conversation right after this.
before we get to the contents of the book, which is truly important, what was your reaction to director mueller s testimony last week and the reaction to his testimony? two things. the testimony, the facts in the document he laid on the table, if you had gone back two and a half years and laid that in front of the american people and said this is what you re going to get two and a half years into this administration i think you d say, no way. this is a west wing story, not a west wing on tv story. this is not real. i think we ve gotten used to the facts, normalized, thinking this is the way the world works. the facts are weird and compelling. the man has given 50 years, the best boss i ever saw. humanity, courage, courtesy, kindness, commitment, and after one hearing, two hearings, people come back and say, maybe he didn t have his a game. he was the best ever. let him walk away. give him thanks. i agree. now the book, the cia in the post 9/11 world and the west wing. you re in t
Lives. nearly all the survivors who were recovered from the rubble that day were rescued within the first 30 minutes after the attack. and even in the midst of the attack on this department, the men and women of the pentagon maintained continuity of operations, after america s armed forces spread across the globe. it was a testament to their courage, their resilience. it was the pentagon s finest hour. in the days and weeks that followed, the search and recovery efforts continued. i witnessed firsthand when i came here to these grounds on september 12th, 2001.