as somebody who has expertise here, as a nonexpert, the way i see this war is that once donald trump cut the deal and said we're out of there. we're going to leave. the only choices that biden really had realistically were negate the deal and say we are staying and probably that means we have to add more troops because we are just going to continue this operation. or leave and it was always going to be inelegant when we left. am i wrong about that? >> no, i think you're right. those are the two sort of binary choices. had we -- had we walked away from the trump deal on may 1st, and retained u.s. forces, we probably would have had to escalate. that is, add troops. to simply sustain an eroding status quo. i mean, the taliban were resurging over the last several years. so, you know, for americans, this looks like it all happened overnight. but for those of us who watch this very closely, it's actually been eroding steadily for