government? look, let s talk about afghanistan, you all like to focus on that, which is legitimate. we were spending a trillion dollars a week. i mean a billion dollars a week in afghanistan for 20 years. raise your hand if you think anyone was going to be able to unify afghanistan under one single government? it s been the graveyard of empires for a solid reason. it is not susceptible to unity, number one. so the question was, do i continue to spend that much money per week in the state of afghanistan knowing that the idea that being able to succeed, other than sending more body bags back home, is highly,
got an awful lot done. an awful lot done. and there s more to get done. but, look, let s let me ask a rhetorical question. no, anyway. thank you. yes. be careful. don t get hurt. i m going to take it. mr. president, thank you. sebastian smith from afp. another question on ukraine. ukraine borders four nato member countries. how concerned are you are you concerned that a real conflagration in ukraine if if russians really go in there that it could suck in nato countries that are on the border and you end up with an actual nato/russia confrontation of some kind? and secondly, are you
relationship with iran, they re aligned shia to shia. but they also need the united states and they want the united states to continue cleanup operations against isis. so the iraqi government is in a very difficult position right now. let s talk about afghanistan, because even as the taliban and the u.s. preliminarily reach this cease fire, we see this big attack over the weekend. taliban killed ten afghan soldiers at an army base. there are many people looking at this and they re very skeptical about whether a cease fire will hold. what do you think? i m also skeptical. i think the recent history would advise us to be skeptical. look, there s two things we know about the taliban. one, they re not trustworthy, and two, they re not monolithic. and when you re negotiating with them, and i m not suggesting we shouldn t pursue diplomacy here, you need to realize not one faction or one individual leader in the taliban speaks for all of them. so it points to the difficulty of trying to f
0 to talk about going. we re continuing to provide for defense capacities to the ukrainians. we re talking about what s going on in both the baltic and the black sea, et cetera. there s a whole range of things that i m sure he s trying to calculate how quickly he can do what he wants to do and what does he want to do. but i he s not he s an informed individual, and i m sure not sure. i believe he s calculating what the immediate short-term and the near-term and the long-term consequences of russia will be. and i don t think he s made up his mind yet. i want to ask you about your domestic agenda. you ve gotten a lot of questions about voting rights, mr. president, but i want to ask you about black voters. one of your most loyal constituencies. yep. i was in congressman clyburn s district yesterday in south carolina. you opened this news conference talking about him. i spoke to a number of black voters who fought to get you elected, and now they feel as though you re not figh
not allowing girls and women to go to the market. under the taliban girls were banned from school and women from work. many terrified the dark days are about to return. do you worry about the girls safety today? yes, the principal says they tell us you all might die. it upsets you? reporter: yes, she says. i try to help the women, i m very said. when i see all these girls, i get really upset now. joining us president on the council of foreign relations, richard haass. thank you for getting up early to be with us. let s talk about afghanistan, president biden is showing no signs he ll walked back. he was asked earlier this week if he had any regrets about his decision, he said no. but what are you hearing from people you talked to or what do you think, inside the white house do you think there s some second guessing going on?