overwhelming feeling, certainly that fear is there. but we re here to assure all the citizens of louisiana and the visitors to our state, you know, we re going to work it hard each and every day, 24/7 till the mission is over to make sure we can resume some semblance of normalcy hopefully sooner rather than later. major general, you ve got some great people helping there, and you are one of them. we thank you for what you re doing. thank you for your service and thank you for keeping the people of my home state safe and making life better for them under these circumstances. i appreciate you. thanks. you bet, don. hey, can i give a shout-out to our soldiers and airmen that are deployed overseas right now? you think i m going to say no to that? are you kidding me? absolutely. we have 2,400 guardsmen that are currently deployed overseas in the middle east, and we have some on the southwest border mission, and we re super proud of their service overseas and on the southwest border.
retrograding. so they re destroying equipment, moving out some unneeded forces. but you can t draw down completely until you get the last afghan evacuees out. so it s a very, very difficult mission that they re undertaking in these next couple days. martha: certainly is. thanks, jennifer griffin, at the pentagon. we re waiting for a briefing from the pentagon. we ll take you there live when that gets underway. my first guest warned earlier this week that president biden s withdrawal from afghanistan would leave him with blood on his hands. we saw a lot of blood shed over the course of yesterday. sadly joining me now, michael mccall of texas. ranking member of the house foreign affairs committee. congressman, good to have you with us today. obviously this threat continues. i heard a description this morning of what s going on on the ground right now. we have 5,000 american troops
the diplomatic presence. there s a number of issues implicated in a decision like this. first and foremost on our minds, and this is always the case but accusely the case after yesterday is the safety, the security of the americans that would be part of that mission. the secretary of state, the president of the united states and this full team wants to be confident that our people serving overseas, diplomats, service members, others are in a position to operate as safely and securely as possible. so that is a big piece of business. we re also discussing these broader issues with a range of our international partners. this is not just a question that the united states will have to decide for itself. every country around the world
that have showed up at each location to provide coloring books, books to read, educational opportunities, sports. at fort bliss when i was down there, the soldiers built soccer goals and set up soccer areas for them to practice and play soccer to keep them occupied. a great news story. general, i m going to turn it over to you for closing thoughts you might have. thanks, john. for everybody in the room and on the phone, it s a privilege to talk to you today and a privilege to be executing this mission for those that have helped us for a couple of decades. we continue to look forward to supporting them. we re prepared to do this as long as it takes to ensure that we get them settleded here back in the united states of america. i m really proud of the soldiers, sailors, amen and marines. i have coasties working here for
you, guardians, you name it. we re working hard. every time i look them in the eye and talk to them, you cannot imagine how proud and privileged that they are to support this mission. they tell me that all the time when i ve been out on circulation. i feel the exact same way and we look forward to continue to make this a successful operation. thanks for letting me tell the story. thanks for your time this afternoon. okay. i have time to take a few on my own. martha: all right. we re going to keep an eye on the kirby q&a here as we get an update just moments ago from the air force general. i want to bring in victor davis hanson who has been looking at this with us this afternoon a senior fellow at the national review institute. good to have you with us. i m struck as i listened to this general talking about what a great job we re doing with these