perhaps in the current administration? was it in intel? was it in ungoverned spaces in afghanistan? or was it this new afghan military, or something else? well, first of all, the afghan military had been supported for hundreds of billions of dollars over the previous 20 years with equipment, personnel training. what never happened, and this was apparent, although our intelligence community and the military often denied it. what was apparent was that that military did not have the regional support. it had the support of the central government, but the central government lacked support out in the region. what we d call the war lords, the leaders of the various factions, never really submitted to the central government in kabul. the result of that was that the taliban which was in some ways still connected in those
the media/foreign policy establishment is more hawkish than probably most of the country. your thoughts? well, my thoughts are that the press this time around is not giving biden any kind of pass. all you ve had to look at is both whether it s fox reporters who have hammered john kirby, the pentagon spokesperson or cnn this morning and nbc, you had chuck todd of meet the press, i watched him, he hammered tony blinken, saying speaking of not aging well, what you said weeks ago is not aging well. this has been a total disaster. biden is doing what president trump had wanted to do, four presidents, two decades, disastrous war in an area that just doesn t want us there and it s stone age war lords going at it with each other. it s a horrific situation. but the way that biden pulled out shows a real disaster as far as intel is concerned. he kept saying that it would be fine. four weeks ago, that the afghan military was up to the point of
first question is where is the aircraft carrier and why is it not back the indian ocean given we have a very difficult evacuation operation taking place in kabul. we need to have forces ready to support troops on the ground. this justifies investing millions in a maritime asset but it is in the wrong place. that would be my first request. also it is not too late to turn this around. we are seeing a terrible civil war unfold. the way the afghans do their fighting is civil war unfold. the way the afghans do theirfighting is not civil war unfold. the way the afghans do their fighting is not to have street battles in the cities themselves, the war lords and tribes will be fleeing into the mountains and then they will retrain and regroup and rearm and come back with a vengeance. the taliban do not represent all of afghanistan.
saying he drank the cool aid sums it up just about right. for years now i spent six years in and out ofpe that country,ut for years, every bitf available evidence showed what the u.s. government was doing was not working that what we had built was run by former war lords, by corrupt politicians. the corruption went from the uniformed police officers on th street who were seen by most afghans as little better than thieve asks drugbe dealers all e way to the top of the government. these filled our newspapers and our television reports.ed for the u.s. government now to say we are so surprised is just i don t know where to start withst that. but it s clear there was no real functioning exit plan that there appear to be hundreds of ed thousands, tens of thousands of afghans who probably are in danger, need a way out and don t have one. matt, there are a lot of people who say 20 years, and all the money that was spent, $40
locally, regionally, and some of the war lords on the national level, they play for themselves. they don t play for a centralized government. the whole concept of a central government is a failure. you know, when i went there, one of the things that i did first washi i read a book by a guy nad alexander burns called kabul, it was written in 1843 at the end of the first british/afghan war in which all of the british forces in that city were slaughtered by a war lord and a regional tribal chief. it played out in the 1890s again. it was going to play out for the russians. and it was going to play out for us. f u.s. intelligence can only give you so much information. it is the decision makers who act on it. this deal that was cut with the taliban was cut in the previous administration. was supposed to be carried out at camp david and signed on september 11th that gave the