never know for sure. there s so many different cost costs to the united states. there are nato allies on the front lines. they re going to want an increased american presence to make them feel more secure against an aggressive russia. one thing leads to another. this is probably the most important phone call of president biden s presidency to date. what is the likelihood that putin will pull those troops back, especially with the threat of sanctions? does moscow actually respond to a threat of or implementation of sanctions? when you look at a country like iran, that could be isolated from sanctions as it has been. you re really closing off at the economy. moscow is different. russia is different. they can t necessarily be squeezed when it comes to sanctions. no, but they can cry out.
interests, and what they have done and they have the means, it does not take a lot to create a vehicle and born explosive device and inflict mass casualty. kayleigh: it s kayleigh here, speaking with a number of our former colleagues in the white house just last hour and there was a consensus among them and the consensus was this. to that it was a mistake to announce an august 31st deadline. keith kellogg who you know well, national security council said it was a big mistake. if i was advising the president i would call the head of the taliban and say you are not going to do this, that date is up to us, not you. another former high-level official told me that so we went from an arbitrary deadline of august 31st that became a taliban redline and that to date put a target on our troops back, your assessment? kash: so the taliban is dictating the terms to the
years because the attention had shifted to iraq. and so, president obama was trying to formulate a strategy for afghanistan that was missing. the pentagon felt, strongly, that to stabilize afghanistan, we needed to have a surge and this was a huge debate, within the administration. and joe biden was concerned that the mission was shifting away from its intention, which is what he talked about today, which was to disable al qaeda and go after the people who had attacked the u.s. and he felt that we should limit our mission there because we would get bogged down, endlessly. he turned out to be right about that. and i think most americans accept that argument. you look at polling, and by something like a two-to-one margin, americans supported the idea of getting out of afghanistan. but, you know, i do think that these images, today, are going to have some impact on that. in the long poll, i think biden was was right about that. 12 years ago. and and he, you know, clearly, feels strong