it s ridiculous. an idea that ridiculous and only be imposed by force only with armed men at gunpoint. the moment these ideas are not mandatory, people tend to revert to the lives that they refer to it. that may be the real reference of afghanistan and let s hope our leaders notice it. a retired army colonel and former senior advisor to the secretary of defense entrances tonight because he is the one man who can answer the question who should have known better? thank you so much for coming on tonight. so you have called for withdrawal from afghanistan for a long time, gave them a detailed plan for how to do that without the result we are seeing today. what did our government and just do that we should not have done? i think there are three things we have to take into consideration. first, of course, is there was never an exit strategy. when i was in the pentagon, the only thing i could find out was
if the president continues to take a stand saying i stand by my decision. then what else? i don t think there s anything much for anybody else to do. if he stands by his decision, he stands by his decision. stand by the decision. secure the airport in kabul and make sure that we get these afghani friends, people who collaborated with us, into the united states. you know, in the 19th century, the british were in afghanistan. we ve been there longer than the british. we ve been in afghanistan twice as long as the soviet union was. at some point, we were going to have to find an exit strategy. it is just so sad that they didn t seem to be choreographed. if anything reminded me of jimmy carter s desert rescue during the iran hostage crisis where carter said, i needed one extra helicopter. we needed a plan and wasn t actualized. so biden will take a black eye for that. on the other hand, in the long
century, the british were in afghanistan. we ve been there longer than the british. we ve been in afghanistan twice as long as the soviet union was. at some point we were going to have to find an exit strategy. it s just so sad that they didn t seem to be choreographed. if anything, it reminded me of jimmy carter s desert rescue during the iran hostage crisis, where carter said, i just needed one extra helicopter. we needed a plan, and it wasn t actualized. so biden is going to take a black eye for that. but on the other hand, in the long sweep of history, that ladder of the american embassy in saigon that we watched, that was a symbol of american shame when that happened. but today that ladder is in the gerald ford museum, and it stands for america not leaving its friends behind. so what george w. bush said at the outset of our talk here, don, is the exact right message right now. biden needs to run a humanitarian effort out of
you need. he asked that question multiple times every single day. president biden has been deeply engaged. yes? there s a lot of anger in australia this morning about the way this has played out. we ve got citizens and then, of course, so many afghans who have helped the australian forces and helped the u.s. mission over the past 20 years. does the administration accept some responsibility or perhaps what would be your response to those people who are trapped and some are fearing execution because of the exit strategy or perhaps lack of competent exit strategy? we do take some responsibility for our allies and partners in afghanistan. in fact, as i said in my opening comments, we are working to facilitate flights and have already done so for countries that have gotten their citizens to the airport. we re eager to work with australia to help get out australian citizens and other
the kids come. it all the scenes of total chaos that we saw play out on the tv yesterday could ve been avoided if the administration had planned for this in advance. what i am saying is it is an unmitigated disaster, state on the reputation of the united states of america. you are back. let s turn it over to get some thoughts. you have some? i wanted to get out of afghanistan, but not like that, dana. imagine having 20 years to plan for something. this is the result. jesse junior could have planned a better exit strategy. end he peered over his crib on sunday and said, dad, white didn t president finally been some air support in order to bu time for the event, i said i don t know. we re watching these images of people clinging from airplanes. the taliban is parading around with our weaponry and ice is jailbreaking americans.