served in iraq and afghanistan, and adam weinstein, a former marine who served in afghanistan. he is now at the quincy institute for responsible spacecraft. i want to begin with the marines tonight because these were your brothers in arms who were lost today. timothy, let me begin with you and just your feelings of what happened today. i mean, it s an entirely tragic day for the marine corps but also the war in afghanistan. i ve been over there, and i think many people who have been over there, i heard the screams of parents of afghans who had their children killed, and then i came home and heard those same screams from both widows and families. it s an utter tragedy, yet as i look today at the loss of life, i realize this has been happening in afghanistan for 20 years, and more than 2,000 american soldiers have been killed in this war, so i m glad this is coming to an end, but it s also who will be the last soldier to die in afghanistan?
of that, should give us all pause as americans and give us a little bit of humility to recognize that our military and our political system and the constant change in foreign policy that happens from administration to administration is not able to intervene in countries abroad and remake those societies. it s simply a crazy proposition. and i know that when you talk to the average american outside of washington, d.c. and you ask them, do you think it s normal to stay in a country militarily for 20 years, the answer is almost always no. adam weinstein, timothy kudo, joe cirincione, thank you all very much for joining us on this important night. thank you. coming up, at this very hour tonight, the texas state house is debating the latest edition of the republican bill that restricts voters rights in that state. the texas congressman and former
have a risk here, and we have a risk there and say that we should just chase them with permanent u.s. military intervention in perpetuity. but that simply is not a strategy. tim kudo, i was thinking today about 1983, and i m sure as all marines think about, when the marine barracks in beirut was blown up by a terrorist, 231 american deaths, i think 20 or so marines in that group, and president reagan did absolutely nothing other than completely retreat and remove all marines from harm s way. compare that to where we are tonight. yeah, so my old unit was first battalion 8th marines which is one of the units on the ground in kabul right now, may even be the unit that took the casualties today, and we were that unit in beirut.
government in afghanistan, a country that has never once in its entire history been a united country, and is made up i don t mean this in a derogatory way made up of different tribes who have never, ever, ever gotten along with one another. and back with us, joe cirincione, tim kudo and adam weinstein. let s talk about the history of afghanistan and how it relates to tonight. those were strong words by the president, and you may disagree with the way he conducted this evacuation, but he s telling the truth. he s explaining it the way he sees it, and i think accurately. he s getting to the heart of the issue. this was a flawed strategy from
today. it s sad, it s tragic, and while people like me get to pontificate about this, my thanks go out to people like tim and to adam who served in uniform, who were on the front lines, who did the right thing in afghanistan and implemented a strategy that they had no role in creating, but they did, to the best of their ability. we owe you, tim and adam, some thanks, and lawrence, thank you for having them on to share their experiences tonight. adam, one of my fears about the way this has been discussed the past two weeks is there is in the air, or certainly was until today and maybe will continue, this kind of mythologizing about the policies of america, and it is a machine that there is no reason why it couldn t have run a more proper retreat from afghanistan.