Page 734 - Commanders News Today

Right organizational architecture, the right concepts, the right leaders. we squandered opportunities on which we might have capitalized early on. >> john mike fairfax, retired army special forces. how do you explain why weve been in afghanistan for 20 years? >> i think because we fought 21-year wars. i think had we had people with a longer time horizon that were seeing this as a marathon as opposed to a seven-month sprint on a deployment or a 12-month sprint on a deployment, to include the comm...

Dozen, its got a god dam rounding error. those are lives. anyone that respects the military should absolutely be calling for a congressional hearing. it means you are absolutely questioning the generals so that we dont replicate what we did in this war for the next one. >> during the final weeks of americas withdrawal back in washington, i met with almost all of the wars chief architects. the commanders of the war in afghanistan for some tough questions and painful reflections on what went wrong...

Considerably, afghan forces are better than we thought they were. they are better than they thought they were. >> the afghan commanders who make up that core never lost a battle against the taliban and they never will. >> general, there are a lot of americans who look at the collapse of the afghan military and think, did those generals lie to us ? >> no, they did not. you dont stand up as a young 21-year-old lieutenant and say troops, i think we got about 30% chance of taking that hill, follow m...

And leaders. we squandered opportunities on which we may capitalized early on. >> john, mike fairfax, how do you explain we have been in afghanistan for 20 years? >> i think because we fought 21 years war. had we had people with a longer time horizon that we are seeing this is as marathon as opposed to seven months sprint on a deployment to include commanders who we rotated through. i think we would have a potentially different outcome because people could have some accountability for the decisi...

Of the commanders. the first one is from jason dempsey, retired army. if you could have done something differently as a commander, what would it be? >> i probably would have been far more in my place, my first time over there more had to be done outside the military. at that time the state department was taken only volunteers to go to afghanistan, it was not direct in anybody. i think we had to look at all of the mentions and put it in a footing. just like the military was. >> if you could have ...

Evacuation of americans since the fall of afghanistan. and, you know, it was kind of surprising when all of a sudden the first cnn headline was that the u.s. state department successfully evacuates americans when they really didnt apply any effort until we were at the 99 and a half yard. mike: is im curious, as someone whos never if done one of these rescue operations, any dicey moments? any nerve-racking experiences? >> quite a bit, actually. at one point even one of our evacuees, she that had ...

A firm pledge to retaliate against those responsible. the number one suspect, osama bin laden. the military has always had a contingency plan for attacks against a variety of bin laden targets. behind me in whats left of this building here tonight, the military is literally dusting off those plans. tom? >> nbcs reporter. jim, around the world, they are still on the high state of alert? >> the high state of alert. delta, a short term after military commanders all over the world took the responsib...

He said any threat they would pose to the united states and to americans has been sufficiently mitigated. now i want to play a clip from you from march of 2015, the next year. jen psaki on fox reacting to that similar comment. >> was it worth it? absolutely. we have a commitment to our men and women serving in our military defending our national security every day well do everything to bring them home if we can and thats what we did in this case. >> bill: six years later how do those comments pl...

Terngs -- paying attention to the war in afghanistan. >> let me ask you this, because the government fell more quickly, much more quickly than many saw coming and i wonder, did u.s. officials, did commanders through the years, did they miss calculate about what the u.s. had built there or did they just straight up mislead. did they exaggerate their success on the ground? >> well i think both. depending on the commander. some misled, some tried to put an optimistic spin on it as they could. but t...

Campaign? >> everyone that we asked said that was a major problem. i mean, you have seven or eight lost years basically where the commanders in afghanistan dont have what they need and that doesnt only include soldiers, it also includes resources, it includes state department employees, it includes attention. and in that memo from rumsfeld, president bush didnt know the name of general mcneal. and i think that when we look at the war in afghanistan and put it in the context of all 20 years, ther...