obtain what they called critical national security briefing on the front line. the president brought that bus to a screeching halt with a letter marked dear madam speaker he wrote due to the shutdown i m sorry to inform you your trip to brussels, egypt and afghanistan has been postponed. we will reschedule this seven day excursion when the shutdown is over. among the grounded was adam schiff who was supposed to be on the trip with pelosi and complained this was what he called fifth grade conduct by the president. white house aides said this was not a tit-for-tat. the president says pelosi should stay in washington to negotiate oh and they say while the military aircraft has been put on hold it is pelosi s prerogative to fly commercial if she wants to. tucker? tucker: highly amusing. ed henry thank you very much. michelle richie a former press secretary for the policy communications committee. she joins us tonight. thank you for coming on. thanks, tucker, for having me. tucker: so
publicity stunt a p.r. move she reacted angry and said it was not. if it wasn t, what was it? what is her position on our continued presence in afghanistan. i think her mission was quite clear from what came from her staff. they were going to meet with nato officials in brussels and they were going to meet with our men and women in uniform and, look, it seems like this fight between godzilla and king kong is just going to go on for quite some time now. but i do think that it is a tit-for-tat and i think that this just exposes the president s lack of maturity when it comes to running our government. tucker: of course it was a tit-for-tat. obviously. right. tucker: it does raise, i think, a highly amusing one but it also raises a couple of real questions and i think it s worth talking about. what is the speaker s position on keeping trips in afghanistan? i don t know exactly what her mission is as far as keeping troops in afghanistan. tucker: isn t that a key question? that
tucker: it was a very dangerous cocktail, though. mark steyn put it better i know.one thank you. thank you, tucker. tucker: syria isn t the only military commitment america has abroad right now. or our largest. 14,000 troops remain in afghanistan. there arefg reports the president is considering withdrawing some or all of is that wise? what should our policy toward afghanistan be? how does it effect our contest with china? our biggest rival? robert caplin has been more places than anyone i m aware of. he s a senior fellow at the center for new american security and he u joins us tonight. mr. caplin, thank you very much for coming on. it s my pleasure to be here. tucker: so you have written about afghanistan, thought about afghanistan a lot about afghanistan. in youry judgment, what s the right course going forward? afghanistan? well, first of all, let see lay out some facts. the united states has been in afghanistan for 17 years. the troops being deployed there now were in
i think his decision tucker: that s nots the bigger question, actually. the bigger question is, should we keep troops in afghanistan? and no one seems interesteddd in that. if that is an actual question. a speak of the president is more interested in keeping our fellow workers from getting paid. that s what he is interested in. tucker: right. i m surerd that s his goal. let me ask you though, why shouldn t straightforward question once more. why shouldn t she stay in washington until this crisis is resolved? you just said it s very important that our federal workers get the salary they are due. so why shouldn t she stay herere and work on it until that happens? well, it seems like conservatives are acting like nancy pelosi was going over there for two weeks to lay on a beach. that s not what s happening. tucker: you already couldn t tell me why she was going there. we still don t know why she was going. one, i don t work for nancy pelosi, but i can tell you thehe reason w
is still there, but the question becomes, is spending $45 billion a year there the right way to deal with international terrorism? because the iranians, the indians, thehe pakistanis, the chinese all have strong, strategic interest in afghanistan. we do not. our strategic interest there, and it s complicated to explain, we don t have time now, are much, much less. so we re going to have to pull out under this president or the next one. tucker: so what you just said sounds right, and it sounds like it s probably a conclusion that s been clear for a while. what does it say about our policymakers here in washington that nobody, thatsh i m aware of,, is debating this at a high level in public anyway and that thisis has been allowed to persist in this kind of counter productive limbo for so long? yes. this is a classic case of