Page 586 - Administrations News Today

The american government over 20 years failed to really understand afghanistan, understand the 3,000-year history of afghanistan which is being repeated once again. these are -- and that failure goes back through all the administrations. it goes back -- i can recall ten years of classified hearings from our intelligence and our military. none of which were willing to recognize the various -- the very nature of afghanistan. >> i understand you on the shared failures. so right now we have yet to he...

Even worse to have understood what was likely to happen and not care, unquote. does president biden not bear the blame for this disasterous exit from afghanistan? >> jake, weve seen two things. first, weve known all along and said all along, including the president, that the taliban was at its greatest position of strength at any time since 2001 when it was last in charge of the country. that is the taliban that we inherited. and so we saw they were very much capable of going on the offensive an...

Casualties. was there any learning from that? >> well, one of the really controversial issues when president obama ordered that surge was he set a date for a departure. and actually i supported that decision. and it was a controversial part of his decision. and the reason i supported that is because if we did not have significant progress or show significant progress over the course of the next 18 months or so, then we had the wrong strategy, and we really needed to recalibrate. and i think that...

Afghanistan is rapidly falling under the control of the very same people who sponsored those attacks again us 20 years ago. the taliban is retaking afghanistan, freeing our enemies from prison, putting our friends to death. >> confronted a challenging afghanistan he has failed to protect the american people from this challenge, biden administration has just failed in the execution of its own plan. it looks like now they are trying to get folks out. this reminds me of previous administrations. >>...

I think that there are just limits to what the united states can do to kind of engineer events and shape countries that are so distant from us as afghanistan is. we went in for counterterrorism purpose and it morphed into a nation building purpose and frankly it may be that there was never a particular strategy or formula that was going to work in a place that is so different from the united states. but to your specific question though, donald trump clearly was in this huge rush to both claim re...

With a legitimate purpose that started more people felt was a kind of justified activity by the united states. do you think in light of what we have seen today, in light of the failure of nation building over 20 years, what you have described as a bipartisan disaster over successive administrations, do you think the memory of the afghan war will change, the kind of meaning we make of it? >> well, of course it will because it will be remembered like the vietnam war as one of the worst military de...

The things i was worried about. >> they did cut the deal for them to be withdrawn after may. >> yeah. but biden didnt have to stick to it. the trump administration had already reneged on that deal. the taliban kept crossing the red lines. trump at least stuck to his red lines. what we saw here was a complete inability to do that. a very hasty withdrawal. no plan in place whatsoever. those trying blame trump for this, it is quite the stretch. and of course, there is reflecting who is to blame. th...

And the policy side of this as well. the military side is just for years under administrations weve been told that the military has been investing billions of dollars of supporting afghan troops. thats just clearly not true. there was barely a fight. and that may be because of corruption, lack of pay. we should have known that. the military should have known that. the second is the policy failure as well. not only why are we there, but is the taliban a reliable partner in all these in both the p...

The afghan government. i want to bring in evelynfarkas. thank you for your time today. both president biden and former at the present time trump are fighting over whos to blame. take a listen to what mike pompeo said earlier today. >> it looks like the biden administration has just failed in its execution of its own plan. this reminds me of when weve seen previous administrations to allow embasies to be overrun. it feels like theres a bit of panic to reinsert soldiers. the plan must league we ha...

0 going in and out of the country. if that were to happen, big if. then the u.s. military, who are there, they will work to defense any u.s. americans who are there and to keep the airport open so they can get the americans out safely. also, though, its important to point out, you know, there were about 1,000, less than 1,000 u.s. troops who were already there. only about a1,000, not really full 1,000 have made their way in. that total of 5,000. they are not there yet. >> yeah. >> the current pl...