without the afghan military or a functioning government, would that have been enough to retake kabul to be able to secure the passage to everybody at the airport? i don t want to profresz to be a military expert. i can i say think safely it would have taken a substantial number of forces to try to retake the city or establish a much broader perimeter, and, of course, if that was ultimately opposed by the taliban, in a sense, it would have defeated the purpose. anyone outside that perimeter would not have been allowed to get through it to come to the airport. among other things. right. once the afghan military collapses, we don t have enough troops to retake kabul, and we are in the position of having to rely on the taliban or at least communicate with the taliban to make sure that we get individuals to the airport? that s correct. okay. i just think this is important to put on the record
0 so i thank you very much for the way that you have kept us engaged and informed as decisions have been made. as as you pointed out, the biden administration was dealt a very difficult hand on the withdrawal from afghanistan. we all recognized we needed to withdrawal the options were extremely limited. the mistakes made by previous administrations, we ve talked about it, but i think we need to understand that many of us did not support the 2002 campaign to go into iraq. and one of those reasons was that we wanted to complete the mission in afghanistan when we had the chance to do it when the taliban was diminished after our military came in after the attack on our country. but instead we went into iraq, which was not engaged in the 9/11 activities and we never finished afghanistan. a mistake made by the bush administration. and we ve already talked about the trump administration and setting a deadline and releasing prisoners and moving forward with the reduction of troops. when there
city, what do you think american viewers and viewers around the world should know about what happens next? well, first it s important to recognize this is one of the greatest military collapses that i think exists in history. the fall of the afghan army, the fall of afghanistan, the fall of kabul has happened at a speed that is really stunning. and for the most part, the afghan army and police, supposedly 300 to 350,000 strong with extraordinarily sophisticated weaponry provided by the united states, $83 billion spent over 20 years, just all melted away. by contrast, one has to say the south vietnamese army fought pretty hard in 1973, 74, 75, took two or three years for that military to get defeated. this is extraordinary.