united states and when the is us getting involved in a potential civil war? what is that line? it is pretty simple. when terrorists attack and kill our people. when they threat ton attack our country, they re an enemy, an adversary, and we have to stop them. and isis-k is an adversary that is intent on attacking american and our try. now look, isis almost camtured baghdad when president obama said we had to go back in and work with the iraqis to stop them from establishing a cal fate in iraq. and we did. we have to continue to go after
u.n. in the bush administration. thank you for coming on. let me start with the same question that i asked leon panetta. have you thought about what you may vo gotten wrong in the last 20 years? i think one of the principal mistakes made is that leaders did not explain why it is in our national security interests to have a continuing u.s. military presence in afghanistan. as an insurance policy to make sure that the taliban did not come back to power, and provide safe aichb haven for isis, al qaeda, and other groups. and also the threat of the terrorist government inback stan. for that strategic reason it has been valid for to years. but i think it got lost in the
operating in it for a long time. a bigger problem is the number of foreign fighters coming in. they re seeing the americaning leaving now under fire, and they want to be part of it and this was happening over the last several months where extremists have been coming in because they want to witness the final departure of the americans. and while the taliban say they don t want to accept foreign fighters, they don t want isis, they don t want isis stealing create for their war, will they will be able to recognize these people? is a taliban fight near greats an islamist over the border going to see him as a threat or a brother in the struggle. so while they say they re going to stop, it will be difficult to know if they really recognize how extreme and dangerous some of the people coming in actually
administration s decision to get out in 2011 that may look like the trump-biden decision to get out of afghanistan in 2021. and it brought isis into such prominence in syria and iraq requiring the obama administration to go back into iraq. . look the comparison among the difference situations, i think in a sort interview illuminates it, but the central question that you have to keep asking is what is america s interest at any given time. the answer, i think, is unambiguously no. the reason i ask you is this. we can debate a lot of things about iraq, but our reasoning for going into iraq turned tout
we can leave the battlefield, but we still face terrorists around the world. and we re going to have to deal with them hopefully with using counter terrorism operations. the president said we have to go after isis. we have to go after those involved in this attack nap will require counter terrorism operations to go after them. the same thing will be true with al-qaeda. i think that al-qaeda will reestablish itself. so the work in afghanistan is not finished and we ll have to find ways to go after terrorists where ever they are. i understand that, but what is, i guess compare the challenge of that and afghan to